


Double Crossing

by JessaLRynn



Series: DC 'Verse [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, None - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 11:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 43,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12840618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessaLRynn/pseuds/JessaLRynn
Summary: The Doctor is out of his depth. The Doctor is wondering what he could possibly be thinking. The companions are having the time of their lives. Two threats at once lead to a complicated situation.





	1. Prologue: Unconventional

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be a short challenge response. It... got a bit away from me. Just a little... OK, just 20 chapters. Ah well.
> 
> * * *

"I know what I'm doing. I've been to one of these things before, you know."  
  
Rose bounced on her toes and grinned up at the Doctor. "Have you? When was it? Where? Oh, tell me, tell me!"  
  
She was too excited by half, in the Doctor's enlightened opinion.  
  
"Erm... I... huh." He scratched at the back of his head. "Can't remember," he said, after a moment's blissful scalp-rubbing slash cogitation. "But I'm sure I'll be fine." Then, his brain pointed out that Rose had legs and they were fully visible to the naked eye for once, which was decidedly odd. "What are you wearing?" he asked with some surprise.  
  
Rose twirled, letting her adorably designed blue mini-dress show that, among other things, dark stockings with lines up the back had a very interesting effect on the Doctor's blood pressure. He ignored it, wrote it off as nerves about the mission they'd agreed to undertake.  
  
"It's absolutely perfect, Doctor. The TARDIS made it for me. She got it exactly right, it looks just like it did on tele."  
  
"OK, so who are you supposed to be, then?" he wondered.  
  
"I'm Nurse Chapel," she said with a little scoff. "You remember, the blonde who was in love with the alien."  
  
"Oh," he said.  
  
She was out the door while the possibilities of that phrase went skittering through his head. He shoved them aside and went to the console to recheck his figures, hoping against hope that maybe this was the wrong place and they really didn't need to go in here. Sadly, the TARDIS had landed exactly where and when she was supposed to be. The signal petered out right about here.  
  
Rose came bounding back in. "Come on, Doctor, before I change my mind and make you come as Q."  
  
"Who's Q, then?" the Doctor asked. Still, he followed in her giddy wake because, he didn't care who Q was, really, he wasn't wearing the bloke's clothes.  
  
"You never even saw the show, even once, did you?" she asked, pityingly.  
  
"I did, too," he answered indignantly. "I didn't have anything else to do in the Eighties. Well, except deal with a weekly invasion, but those weren't on the same nights as Star Trek reruns. I don't remember a single 'Q'. I remember the guy with the ears, who you're apparently obsessed with. You do know his blood's green, right?"  
  
"Shut it," Rose said, grinning cheekily, with her tongue poking through her teeth. "He's a fictional character, I'm not obsessed with him."  
  
"I seem to recall, and I quote, 'Give me some Spock for once, show me some Spock.'"  
  
"Well, you could," she agreed, and gestured at his coat pocket, where the sonic screwdriver was located. "You know, scan for aliens or something."  
  
"At a place like this?" the Doctor demanded. "I'm closer to human than that lot."  
  
He gestured at a group of large warriors all dressed in leather and metal. They were wandering through the parking deck toward the same hotel Rose and the Doctor were approaching. The Doctor was floored as he heard them talking. "It's a... oh, blimey." He turned to Rose, feeling completely frantic, then back to the alien whatever they weres, then back to her. He jerked his hands through his hair. "I don't know that language!" he exclaimed.  
  
Rose put a comforting hand on his arm. "It's all right, Doctor," she soothed.  
  
"No it is not!" he shot back. "They are speaking a language on planet Earth that I do not know. Me. I know..."  
  
"Five billion languages, yeah," she said calmingly. "That's Klingonese."  
  
"Why don't I know it?" he demanded, though Rose certainly couldn't know how he had missed some obscure dialect, even if she seemed to be able to identify it.  
  
"It's fiction, too, Doctor," she comforted him. "They're wearing make-up. Most likely, they're as human as I am."  
  
He took a deep, steadying breath. A new language... "Possibly," he agreed. He also, mentally, added learning Klingonese to his to-do list for this ridiculous excursion.  
  
They had been roped into this when King Chishees of Mdrestry informed the Doctor that he was going to have to invade the Earth. Chishees had actually placed a courtesy call to the TARDIS to let the Doctor know. Rose had been caught between giggles and horror, the Doctor remembered that, clearly. Turned out the king's son and heir apparent had stolen a Vortex hopper and legged it. His trail led to Earth and the king had exhausted all other avenues to get the kid back.  
  
The Doctor had offered to bring the prince back. Chishees had generously given him ten days and the brat's last known location. In order to prevent the invasion, the Doctor had to find the prince and bring him back unharmed. Easy enough, they'd thought.  
  
That was before the trail led here, to what turned out to be the biggest convocation of aliens and people who wanted to be aliens on the whole planet, a Star Trek convention at the end of the twentieth century. The Doctor was appalled, floored, flummoxed, and generally did not know what to do.  
  
Rose, however, turned out to be a Trekkie from way back. Now, the Doctor couldn't decide if this was good or bad. He resigned himself, therefore, to taking it one item at a time. Rose at least had a clue, good. There was very little chance of always being able to tell a real alien from a fake one, bad. Rose could talk to these people, good. The Doctor was used to doing the talking, bad. The prince's race were very distinctive in the rest of the galaxy, good. They looked just like humans, only with pointed ears, bad, bad bad. Rose looked good in that dress... um.  
  
The score was still out on that bit.  
  
The Doctor flashed the psychic paper at the entrance and he and Rose were admitted immediately, with a grin from the alien at the door. The Doctor peered at the paper, hoping it hadn't listed him as Bill Shatner or something.  
  
It hadn't. That was a relief. Mind, he wasn't sure whether "Federation Ambassador" was good or not. Rose grinned and shrugged when he asked.  
  
He held her hand and gingerly followed the crowd toward the main convention hall. There were several chattering Klingon things in front of him, so he listened intently, to try to get a jist of what they were saying, when he was interrupted by a sudden, annoying tingling in the back of his skull.  
  
He looked around sharply. There, at the hotel desk. He rolled his eyes and turned to Rose, pulling her away from the crowd and behind a large bit of decorative plastic that was apparently meant to be a plant. Bugger, bugger, bugger. "Rose, remember when I told you I'd been to one of these things before?"  
  
"Yeah," she agreed. "But you said you couldn't remember."  
  
"I just did," he said, with a sigh. "It's this one."  
  
"What?" she demanded. "Where?" Her eyes darted every which way, as if trying to catch a glimpse of pin stripes, or possibly leather, in the crowd around them.  
  
The Doctor shook his head. "Here are the rules. Absolutely no mention of the Time War or the Daleks is to cross your lips. Understand?"  
  
"Yes," she agreed. "But can't we just..."  
  
"Do not under any circumstances refer to me as the Last of the Time Lords."  
  
"I don't," she said. "That's all you. Can't we..."  
  
"And do not ask his companion for her real name, as I'm rather fond of you and want to keep you around."  
  
Rose's eyes went huge. "OK," she said slowly. "But why don't we just avoid you?" she added.  
  
The Doctor stared at her in surprise, then looked at the huge crowd around them. "Good idea," he said. "Let's try it."  
  
"Excuse me," said a vaguely Scottish voice behind him, "what do you think you're doing here?"  
  
"Or not," the Doctor said.  
  
"How're ya gonna explain that, then?" Rose asked, cheekily. "Do lots of planets have a Scotland?"  
  
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Rude," he chided, and turned to say hello to yesterday.

* * *


	2. Prologue: Unconventional

  
Rose peered around the Doctor at this other Doctor. She stared at the little man very hard, but couldn't see it. Her first Doctor had been dark and brooding, punctuated by moments of brilliant, breath-snatching lunacy. Her second Doctor alternated between child-like tempestuousness and dangerous tempestuousness. This little man seemed, at first glance, to be a sweeter, gentler sort of man, older looking than either of her Doctors for sure, but seeming more innocent.  
  
Then, she looked at his eyes. Her heart stuttered in her chest. There was no mistaking those eyes. They were blue, deep, icy. They spoke of enormous power that was scarcely contained, and had the light of stars glittering far within them. Rose didn't think it would be easy to look into those eyes, most days.  
  
Then again, she had stared her first Doctor down on multiple occasions and, if anybody had dangerous blue eyes, it was him. She smiled warmly. "Rose Tyler," she said politely, and held out her hand. "My mum slaps, you might want to watch for that." Her Doctor laughed.  
  
The shorter Doctor interrupted his glare at himself to turn to Rose with a friendly, inviting smile. "Pleased to meet you, Rose," he said, trilling the r in her name.  
  
She giggled.  
  
"Who's this, Professor?" came another voice from somewhere off to the left. Rose turned her head to see where it came from, then turned back to steal a quick glimpse of her Doctor. He was grinning madly, his eyes lit up and practically glowing.  
  
Rose bit her lip and promised herself she would not, under any circumstances, repeat the events with Sarah Jane today.  
  
"Ace," the shorter Doctor said, "this is Rose Tyler. Rose, Ace."  
  
"Hi," said Rose, and held out her hand to the girl in the bomber jacket who shook her hand with a firm but friendly grip. "Thought Sarah Jane said your assistants are getting younger?" she said to her Doctor. Ace was probably at least a year, more likely two or three, Rose's junior.  
  
He tugged on his ear nervously. "Yeah, well, she didn't meet Ace," he said.  
  
"How is Sarah?" asked the other Doctor.  
  
"Oh, you know," said Rose's Doctor.  
  
"Is he... you?" asked Ace with considerable surprise.  
  
"Somebody got warned about changing bodies, I see," Rose muttered.  
  
"Yes," said Ace's Doctor. "Or, I will be him. Though I can't think why. Pin stripes and trainers?"  
  
"Better than a party-colored waist-coat," Rose's Doctor shot back pointedly.  
  
Ace's Doctor grumbled something about inheriting technicolor tendencies and both Doctors laughed.  
  
"Ace, I vote we also change our names to Doctor for the day," Rose said. "Really confuse things here."  
  
Ace grinned. "Nah, just call this one Professor."  
  
"Ace," the Professor cautioned.  
  
"Professor," Ace shot back cheekily.  
  
Rose grinned up at the brown-eyed Time Lord who was starting to look a little green. "I like her, Doctor."  
  
"Oh, good," he said calmly. "Where, of course, good means... well, something other than good, actually. Yes. Right. You. You need to leave. I have to be here, and we can't endanger the continuum."  
  
"I have to be here," the other Doctor replied. "I'm looking for a Streerax arms deal that's to take place here this weekend."  
  
"Well, I'm looking for a lost prince who is going to get this planet invaded if he doesn't turn up. So why don't you run along and let me handle both problems?"  
  
"I was here first," the smaller Doctor said. "Why don't you run along?"  
  
"No," said the younger looking, older Doctor. "I think I'll pull the age card and send you packing."  
  
"We always let One pull the age card," was the reply. "So why don't you try to be serious and leave?"  
  
"Yep," said Rose, to Ace, "here we go with the testosterone again."  
  
The smaller Doctor gaped at her in open-mouthed disbelief while Ace burst out laughing.  
  
"What?" she said, a little confused. She looked up at her Doctor and caught him blushing. "What, don't Time Lords have testosterone?"  
  
Ace's laughter only increased in volume and intensity.  
  
The smaller Doctor cleared his throat. "Right, well, um... I think..."  
  
"Look," said Rose, to deflect from whatever it was that was so weird, "why don't we just work together, get this sorted as quickly as possible, and all of us get out of here?"  
  
Ace finally stopped laughing and leaned on the nearest column to catch her breath. "I'm game if you are, Professor," she said at last.  
  
The Professor was staring at Rose as if he was trying to read her mind or something. "What?" she asked.  
  
"Nothing," he said. Then he looked up at Rose's Doctor. "Right, which one are you?"  
  
"Ten," said her Doctor.  
  
The two Doctors looked at each other, considering. Finally, the older one handed Rose the psychic paper. "Why don't you see if you can get us a room?" he said. "Nice big suite, yeah? Rooms for everybody? The Professor and I need to have a chat."  
  
"Right," she said and glanced at him, nervously. He smiled gently and touched her cheek.  
  
"Go on," he said. "I promise to behave."  
  
"All right," she said agreed at last and led a still snickering Ace off with her.  
  
"So," ventured Rose, "do we need a place with three rooms?"  
  
Ace shrugged. "If you don't mind sharing, yeah, that's fine. I'm sure you're right about the Doctors bunking together. Not a good idea, is it?"  
  
"Oh," said Rose, hoping her voice didn't sound anything like relieved. "Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's got to be something about building tolerances for egos that size."  
  


*?*

Seven considered him for several moments, doing everything short of walking around him to size him up. "So, your companion..."

"Do me a favor and don't mention our age, please." The Doctor suddenly remembered that would be a problem.

"Why ever not?" asked the younger Doctor. Then, he did a quick double take. "Are you telling me..."

"Nine started it," he defended. "I blame him. Mind, if you asked him, he'd say he recalculated it in Earth years. But I think he really just decided not to count the years he didn't like. He picked a nice, round number, so I just go with it."

"So, you're lying about your age to a companion?" asked Seven. His blue eyes started twinkling. "Why would you?"

"Her mum accused me of being forty-five! I looked thirty-eight at the time, forty, tops."

"Since when..."

"You'll find out," the Doctor answered forbiddingly.

"All right," said Seven in his most placating tone. "Why did you send her to get a room? Surely it won't take that long to wrap this up."

"Have you even noticed where we are?" demanded the Doctor.

"Some sort of convention," Seven answered. "Science-fiction fans, Ace said. Why?"

"How do you think we're going to find aliens in the middle of an alien convocation?"

Seven looked around at the blue aliens in the doorway, a green woman dressed like Leela being followed by an entire crowd of t-shirt wearing teenagers, the troop of Klingons heading toward the hotel bar, singing a drinking song. "Ah," he said.

"Yeah," the Doctor answered, "and the kid I'm looking for is from Mdrestry. Apparently, the pointy-eared set is going to be thick on the ground out here."

Rose reappeared. "Are you done snarking?" she asked.

"Snarking!" both Doctors exclaimed.

"Good, 'cuz I got us a suite. Still, I think one of you ought to get kitted out." She looked at the smaller Doctor, considering. "You could be Doctor McCoy," she said.

"And the crowd goes wild," the Doctor murmured to no one in particular.

Rose stared at him. "Yeah, 'cuz you're making so much sense," she said. "C'mon, you two, let's go see our room and make some plans."

"Must we?" the Doctor pleaded.

"You look like Five doing that," Seven commented.

"Yes," said Rose, and firmly took his hand. "I'm pretty sure we must." Then, apparently to make sure she had made her point, she also snatched Seven's hand. "Right, this way, Ace is waiting by the elevators."

Seven stared at their joined hands as they threaded their way through the lobby. Then, he looked around her back and gaped at how she held the Doctor's hand. The Doctor shrugged.

Ace was, indeed, waiting by the elevators. Well, if you called holding a fourteen year old kid in a head-lock waiting. "And don't you dare touch anyone else without permission for the rest of your life, or I will hunt you down, got it?" she shouted as they approached.

"Ace!" Seven exclaimed. "Let him go."

"Not 'til he says it!" she answered, then looked down at her prisoner. "You got me, sunshine?"

The kid gasped out a quick, frantic apology. Ace let him go with a shove away from them and shook her head. "Rotten brat," she grumbled as the kid fled back toward the convention hall at top speed.

"What was that about?" the Doctor asked mildly, in the face of Seven's stern disapproval.

Ace turned her head away and ignored them both as the elevator arrived. She stepped in, punched for the fourteenth floor, and handed Rose a little plastic key.

Rose took it and, as soon as the doors opened again, bounced off down the hall. Ace tore after her, obviously just for the thrill of the chase. "They seem to be getting along well," Seven observed mildly.

"And you have no idea how terrified I am," he replied.

* * *


	3. Chapter 2: Buttercup in Charge

  
The room was nice and spacious. It had two bedrooms with two double beds in each, plus a broad living room type area with a small kitchenette, a large tele, and a sofa that, according to the papers, folded out into another bed.  
  
Rose shrugged. "It'll do, anyway," she observed. "Think it was designed for business travelers. And I guess we're here on business, so it works."  
  
"Look, I dunno about you or Buttercup," said Ace to the taller Doctor, "but I'm hungry."  
  
Rose's Doctor grinned. "And lack of food, of course, is what makes you hungry. Well, come on then. Anywhere around here we can get chips?"  
  
"Chips?" asked Ace and her Doctor, both looking surprised.  
  
"Blame her," said Rose's Doctor. "She got me hooked on them, last body."  
  
"It was our first date," Rose agreed. "I had to pay, 'cuz someone's a cheap skate."  
  
"You can pay this time, too," said her Doctor airily, making his way to the door. Ace followed him, looking sort of thunderstruck.  
  
Rose turned to look at the other Doctor. "C'mon," she said. "S'your first time, s'pose I can buy for you, too."  
  
He just stood there and looked at her, a sort of horrified wonder on his face. His mouth opened and then closed again a couple of times. Rose had no idea what was going on in that vast brain of his, but whatever it was, it had completely floored him. Feeling a bit sorry for him and quite a lot of affection for him, she reached and took his hand. "S'all right, Doctor," she said when he flinched. "I don't bite."  
  
The short, strange, older-looking Doctor shot her a look that said he very, very much doubted it, before he let her lead him after the rest of their group.  
  


*?*

In the end, they wound up in one of the hotel's restaurant bars, which had been made over to look, Rose and Ace claimed, quite a bit like Ten-Forward. Rose adored it instantly, anyone could tell.

The Doctor honestly didn't know what to think about her. She was beautiful, there was no doubt about that, but she was almost unconscionably young. She and Ten seemed to enjoy a close friendship, rather than the usual sorts of relationships he had with his companions, especially the younger ones. He couldn't honestly tell if Ten had lost their mind, or if he just let her have her illusions because she was such a sweet child.

"Look," Rose was saying over the tail end of her basket of the things Americans called chips, "there's the Vulcan contingent. Let's go over there."

The Doctors both moved to get up. Rose firmly shook her head. "Just me and Ace," she said. "You two'll just get us in trouble."

As much as he wanted to object to the statement, the Doctor decided to let it go. He had a few words to say to Ten anyway. "Don't wander off," Ten told Rose firmly. "Either of you," he added, glancing at Ace.

"And Ace?" said the Doctor. "Please don't break anyone."

Ace shot him that brilliant grin of hers. "Wouldn't dream of it, Professor. C'mon, Buttercup, let's go find the aliens."

"Buttercup?" Rose asked.

"Ace likes to give people nicknames," the Doctor said.

"Just be glad it isn't the one she gave Melanie," Ten agreed. "That never did go over."

"Standing right here," Ace pointed out.

"You called an aerobics instructor 'Doughnut'," the Doctor reminded her.

"Well, how was I s'posed to know? She looked like a doughnut to me, and I never saw her do aerobics."

Both Doctors shivered. "Be glad you missed it," Ten said. "She was forever giving me carrot juice."

"You don't like carrots," Rose observed. "Or pears, and that weird cream sauce they had on Delta Arietus."

The Doctor frowned. "Tukue sauce is vile, Rose," he said. "It reminds me of the food we had at the Academy."

"You call that food?" Ten asked and shivered. "Never mind," he added. "Just... come back to me, soon, yeah?"

She smiled softly. "You know I will. Don't get into any trouble while I'm gone."

Ten's return smile was full of something that made the Doctor's stomach clench with fear and anxiety and something else he wasn't going to look up, never mind label. "As you wish," he said.

Rose turned her brilliant smile on Ace, who grinned back. The girls charged off. The Doctor waited until he was certain they were out of ear-shot before turning to Ten with the stern expression of a proper Lord President chastising the errant. "That is your companion," he said firmly.

"She's not just a companion, any more than Ace is," Ten replied, his dark eyes blazing with some strange, deep conviction. "You are more of a parent to that girl than any one has ever been, and for the rest of her life, yours is the face that will pop into her head when some one asks about her father. So don't lecture me about getting too close."

"I was actually going to lecture you about the proprieties, so we'll leave that out, thank you. Aren't we a bit old to have a human teenager for a... a girlfriend?"

"She's twenty," corrected Ten. "Twenty-one if you count the year we missed because the TARDIS decided She wouldn't part with Rose. And, just so you can quit panicking, she's not my girlfriend."

The Doctor studied his future face, looking into those dark, burning eyes. There was an aching loss there, somewhere, a sense of pain beyond reasoning. He blinked and felt himself nearly compelled to look away. "Who is she then?"

The other Doctor, the older, sadder, lonelier Doctor whispered a single concept-word in Gallifreyan. The Doctor blinked in astonishment. "'There's me'?" he translated, the best he could make of the staggering concept of belongingness implied in Ten's usage.

"Trust me when I tell you that some day, those two words will be the most profound you have ever heard."

A porcine alien in a quilted leather jacket threw himself into one of the girls' vacated seats. Then, to the obvious shock of both Doctors, he said, in a perfect South Texas accent, "So, who're ya'll s'posed ta be?"

Rose managed to persuade the Vulcans and Romulans to invite her and Ace to their private party later that evening. Then, they took their leave, claiming they had to get ready, and went to find the Doctors. The two aliens had apparently managed to make friends.

"No, really," her Doctor was saying over what could only be a banana daiquiri, "I'm Q."

"So you've got god-like power over time and space?" said one of the Andorians who was drinking with the Doctors.

Both Time Lords blinked in surprise, and her Doctor tugged at his ear nervously. "S'matter of fact," he agreed, haltingly. "Why, don't you?"

Rose took pity on the smaller Doctor, anyway. He was sipping what looked to be a whiskey sour, and watching his older self in complete confusion. "Hi, fellas," she said. "Got some news."

Ace sidled up next to the burly classic!Klingon and nudged him out of the way. "Hey, Professor, we didn't wander off," she said.

"Thought he said he was Doctor McCoy," said the Tellarite sitting in Rose's former seat. He was obviously about three and a half sheets to the wind.

The table was really crowded, so Rose took a seat in her Doctor's lap. He looked a bit alarmed for a second, but let it pass.

"You can sit in my lap, if you want," the Klingon told Ace.

"Right," she answered coldly. "And you can shove it, if you want."

"Feisty," the Klingon exclaimed with a chortle and moved as if to steal a kiss or something.

Ace was suddenly holding a silver canister that looked pretty much like an old deodorant can. "Tell you what, sunbeam. You can kiss this first, and if you survive, I'm all yours."

"Ace!" both Doctors exclaimed. "Put it away," Ace's Doctor finished with a pronounced sigh.

"I think you gentlemen might want to head out, now," Rose's Doctor added. "Don't want to miss the show. Someone said it was City playing tonight."

"Spock's Brain," everyone groaned, even Rose. Then, of course, the table cleared.

"What's City?" Rose's Doctor asked. He'd used what he overheard, even though he didn't understand it. She wasn't the slightest bit surprised, really.

"City on the Edge of Forever," Rose said. "It's a Classic series episode. Everyone loves it, even when pretty much everyone's got it on DVD now. But they never show it at conventions. Something always happens."

"City on the Edge of Forever," the smaller Doctor mused. "Sound familiar?"

Rose's Doctor got that distant, far-away look in his eyes, the one that said he wasn't here at all, but somewhere with an orange sky, instead. "Oh, yeah," he answered, quite fondly, and smiled at the younger him. Rose was suddenly sure, for some reason, that only she could see how hurt and fragile that smile really was.

"It's a time portal," she said hastily. "Not important, really. Well, it is... oh, let's don't go there."

"Why, what's wrong with it?" asked Ace's Doctor. Rose's Doctor took her hand and held it tightly.

"Someone saves one small, insignificant, ordinary, good person's life, and doing that destroys the world," she answered quietly, sinking back into her Doctor's embrace without really thinking about it.

Ace seemed to have caught on to her discomfort and said, "Listen, Professor, we got an invite to the private pointed-ears party."

"Seriously?" said Rose's Doctor, jumping on the change of subject like it was a gift from heaven. For him, it probably was. "Oh, fantastic!" he said. "Well, I mean, brilliant, really. Absolutely brilliant. How'd you accomplish it?"

"Same as always," Rose said.

"Great," said the Doctor grumpily, "so which empty headed pretty boy will be coming with us this time?"

"Well, it certainly won't be the Tart of France," she answered, hotly.

They looked at each other angrily for a moment and then, all at once, started laughing, resting their foreheads together.

"They're cute," Ace told her Doctor in what was obviously not meant to be a real whisper.

"Button it, Ace, or that name comes out," said Rose's Doctor.

"You wouldn't," she shot back. "I know where you sleep."

"I never sleep," both Doctors answered.

"See, that's the thing," said Rose, standing and straightening the hem of her mini-dress. "For someone who never sleeps, you don't half snore."

They both glowered, her Doctor at her, the other Doctor at her Doctor. Utterly unchastened, Rose continued. "We're going to the party. I suggest you two put those enormous brains to work and figure out the arms deal thingee. I'm sure hunting for the kid is safer. If you can't think of anything else, check the hucksters."

"Hucksters?" asked Ace's Doctor.

"The vendors!" she said. "Geez. There you are, brain the size of a planet..."

"That's Marvin the Paranoid Android," said Rose's Doctor.

"Whatever," she said. "Ace and I are going to party with the supposedly boring logical people. We should have the kid rounded up before the night's over."

"Does she always tell you what to do?" Ace's Doctor asked.

"No," her Doctor answered, "but when she does, I usually do it, because... well, I can't remember."

"Mum slaps," Rose reminded him.

"Oh, yeah," he said cheerfully. "That was it."

Rose, because she was feeling a bit silly and mischievous, leaned over and kissed his cheek. The other Doctor looked utterly gob-smacked. Rose smirked. "You boys behave," she ordered softly.

Then, she went around the table, kissed the gob-smacked Doctor on his cheek as well and, with a flirt of her skirt hem, headed out of the bar.

"Oh, wicked!" Ace announced, and followed her.

* * *


	4. Chapter 3: Good Idea, Bad Idea

"I should do that. Take her around, introduce her to all of me. I mean, look at you." The Doctor chuckled lightly. "I can't... ooh. Memory lane meets as it happens. Ouch."  
  
"Are you usually this insane?" Seven asked, quite a bit of snark in his tone.  
  
"Nope," said the Doctor, grinning wildly. "I'm usually worse... oh, you... ouch."  
  
"What are you on about?"  
  
"Remember the pile up in the Death Zone?" the Doctor asked. "Being Five, and all the other things happening to us all over the place? And suddenly remembering, live action?"  
  
"Yes, but that was inside a closed paradox loop. You should have long since filed my memories."  
  
"That's just it," said the Doctor. "You're going to block them, I think. Because I'm remembering them as they happen to you. Or we're in a sealed nexus."  
  
"On Earth? Don't be ridiculous."  
  
"Exactly," the Doctor agreed. "So that means you're going to seal up your memories of this for some reason. But I'll tell you something else it means. Let's go hit the huckers..."  
  
"Hucksters."  
  
"Whatever. I'll talk to them - Rose is very clever, where else would you hide weapons? I mean besides 'Somewhere where Ace and Jack can never find them'. And while I'm doing that, you can catch up on our reading."  
  
Seven, though looking a little annoyed, nodded. "I'm very bossy in my old age, aren't I?"  
  
"You're lucky it's me. If you'd met big ears, I can't tell you how disturbed you'd be right now." He turned and smirked at his younger self, even as the dazzled, breath-caught, baffled memory swept over him. "You liked that, didn't you?"  
  
"Shut up."  
  
There was a huge model of the ship right in the middle of the hall. The Doctors looked at each other and then at the ship. "Won't work," they both pronounced, immediately, both of them remembering having made a similar assessment in their relative youth.  
  
The large crowd of fans admiring the thing stopped and stared at them. "Why not?" demanded one of the ones Rose called a classic Klingon.  
  
"Dynamic structural stresses," explained Seven. "Traversing light speed requires a motive thrust the equivalent of..."  
  
The Doctor tuned him out, knowing all this. Instead he watched the crowd, looking for anything that seemed out of place. How he was supposed to tell what was out of place and what wasn't at an event like this was completely beyond him. He pulled out the sonic screwdriver, just to take some preliminary readings while several tall people with their heads shaved told Seven he was full of it.  
  
"No, he's right," said a perfectly ordinary, human-looking kid. And the kid proceeded to try to say something similar to what Seven was saying. He had it wrong, but the argument around the ship was making for an excellent distraction.  
  
"What are you doing?" asked a girl who was watching him. She smiled invitingly and moved into his personal space in a manner that reminded him quite a bit of Jack. She had been painted green and wore what looked like a leather bikini. Jack would have followed her into hell, the Doctor decided.  
  
"Scanning," he said, since he doubted she'd think anything of it. "I'm just checking for anything non-indigenous." He blinked at her, shrugged, and turned back to the screwdriver.  
  
She snorted at him. "Geek," she pronounced, and wandered off.  
  
The Doctor wondered how she'd arrived at that conclusion. Wasn't the whole room full of devotees to the cult of Star Trek? Were they officially a cult, yet? Probably not.  
  
The argument continued, and the screwdriver didn't lend any assistance. There were thirty-six non-humans in the immediate vicinity and that was excluding both of himself. He couldn't even tell who the non-humans were. Was it the blue people on the other side of the ship from them? Was it the ordinary kid who was even now trying to explain something called a warp-threshold to Seven? Was it the Klingons, or some of them, anyway? Or the table full of green blokes selling toys with lights and whistles? Maybe it was all of them. Well, not all of them. Some of the people had really obvious, really bad make-up. Of course, that didn't guarantee anything, it could be to disguise that they were aliens under there, not humans.  
  
"Ten times the speed of light?" Seven demanded. "But that's absurd, that starts getting into temporal distortion."  
  
"No, no," the Doctor said. "They're thinking tenth factor, not ten times, surely." Thus, he was drawn into the argument. Oh, well, but he'd need Rose to tell him which ones were the real aliens and which ones weren't, anyway.  
  


*?*

Ace decided that the later Doctor's friend was brilliant. She acted like the person all the geeks thought she should be - all pretty and silly and flirtatious - but she was quizzing every last one of them with the efficiency of a professional interrogator. Ace worked her half of the crowd using a slightly different method than Buttercup's choice - she went for the large blokes who were trying to look scary and the people who looked like they didn't want to be here.

Between them, they had talked to every single person at the party. Ace had elected to play a role, pretending to be a new fan who got dragged along by her more involved friends. That way, she could catch people who didn't seem right without them knowing she'd caught on. She had long since learned to manipulate situations to her advantage from the best in the Universe, after all. It would hurt him if he knew that, though, so she'd never, ever tell him.

It didn't work. No one seemed to fit the bill of a clueless alien prince trying to pretend to be a human pretending to be an alien. Ace decided to give it up as a bad job. They had a few days to sort this, after all. The Doctor and the Professor could go look for the prince tomorrow and she and Buttercup could go blow up the arms dealers after they'd had a good night's sleep.

She went to find Buttercup and saw the girl near the door, talking to one of the pointy-eared blokes. Buttercup's eyes were narrowed and her stance was quite taut. Ace suspected the bloke immediately, once she realized he made Buttercup nervous.

By the time she'd made her way over, Buttercup was smiling and the bloke was no where in sight. "Hi, Ace," she said cheerfully. "Have you seen Bob?"

"Bob?"

"I was just talking to him, but he disappeared." She pouted a bit. "I hate it when they disappear. The Doctor made Adam disappear, and Jack disappeared on his own, and the Doctor disappears all the time, even when he's standing right there."

"Have you been drinking?" Ace asked suspiciously.

"No!" Buttercup exclaimed, looking scandalized. "I'd never! This is important. No, I was just saying, is all. The Doctor won't let me have a pretty boy and he won't be my pretty boy, either."

"Yeah, well, I didn't want to know that."

"Oh, right, sorry. But isn't it annoying?" She sighed and looked around the room, shaking her head. Her dark eyes were huge.

"Buttercup, are you sure you're in there right now?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, I'm just sad. It's very sad, you know. The Doctor won't let me snog him or anything."

"Seriously, Rose, I don't talk about people snogging your mum, so you can not talk about people snogging the Doctor, and we'll both be happy, yeah?"

"You called me Rose!" she said cheerfully. "I was getting used to Buttercup, you know. You can call me Buttercup if you want."

Ace was completely confused. "Look, what does Bob look like?"

"He's pretty and got pointed-ed ears." Buttercup sighed again. "I'm going to the loo."

"Yeah, all right," Ace agreed. "But when you get back, we're going to the room, 'cuz I'm sure your Doctor misses you, the way he was going on."

"Do you think your Doctor misses me?" Buttercup asked, a broad, vacant smile on her pretty face. "Maybe he'd let me have a snog."

Ace laughed. She'd always thought the Professor was hilarious when people flirted with him, but this was more than flirting. "You're mental, Buttercup. C'mon, I'll wait for you."

She did wait, right in front of the ladies' loo, until she got distracted by the sight of a bloke carrying a little blue device that looked only vaguely like one of the tricorders, but not really. She tried to follow him, but lost sight of him almost immediately. So she turned back to fetch Buttercup. She was starting to think that something was wrong with the older girl, and not just that she seemed to be completely infatuated with the Doctor.

She waited a few minutes, but Buttercup didn't reappear. She looked around, but the girl was no where to be seen. Ace was suddenly concerned. She'd been behaving a bit strangely, really. Maybe she really had been drinking, and was still in the loo, being sick.

Neither Doctor was going to like this.

Ace stepped into the loo and called out for her, several times. Other girls appeared, and one blushing bloke, too, but there was no sign of Buttercup. Ace darted out, really, really worried, now. She looked everywhere around the party, desperate to see a blonde head and a blue mini-dress. There was no sign.

One of the Doctors was going to go up in flames.

Ace headed out to go find them, feeling absolutely miserable. She'd found no leads, let the bloke get away, and lost Buttercup. This was an absolute disaster, and she hadn't even blown up anything.

*?*

The Doctor flipped through one of the books he'd picked up, feeling a bit like he was losing his mind. He and Seven had picked up a large pile of them after they had finally managed to extract each other from the arguments over the science of Star Trek. They'd only had moments to make their selections before the Convention Hall closed for the night, so in the end, they'd thrown any one that looked the slightest bit interesting into a large box and bought them all using one of Seven's collection of credit cards.

They had planned to read them tonight so they would both have a better understanding of the situation they found themselves in, but Seven had fallen asleep over his teacup and the Doctor had sent him to bed. He seemed to remember that he ought to have been nearly dead on his feet at this point. There had been the lovely adventure with the Brigadier and then half a dozen fixes throughout space and time, all designed to test Ace and stretch her, bind her. In the next few days, he would have to take her to face her childhood fears in that surreal disaster that was Gabriel's Chase. It was hurting him, it hurt him even now, but it was really hurting the younger him.

He had the privilege of knowing it had turned out all right, but the younger Doctor couldn't know. All Seven knew was that he was shaping Ace into something in order to save her life and the Universe, and he wasn't sure she would even like him after it was all over. This Doctor remembered, though. He was never proud of what he had done with her, but he was proud of what she had done with it.

Shaking his head, he set the book down. There were so many discrepancies, how could you tell which was meant to have happened and which was alternate and which was considered apocrypha? It would take a genius to unravel half of it and this genius didn't have the time.

The door to the suite opened. He looked up and grinned to see Rose sashay inside, a smile on her face like wonder when she spotted him waiting for her. He'd never confess that, of course.

She was strangely flushed, but still as lovely as starlight. Her eyes were wide and excited, fixed on him and that made him feel the little thrill he usually got when she'd grin at him over a strange new planet or time period. Her carefully curled and styled hair had fallen down and hung around her shoulders like a halo. Her hips swayed like grain in the wind, inviting exploration and adventure and he really needed to stop this train of thought before Seven really had a reason to chide him.

"Hello, Rose," he said. "Where's Ace?"

"She wandered off. Well, she said I was supposed to come back. Said you might miss me." Rose shot him a look then that was absolutely devastating. "Did you miss me, Doctor?" she asked softly.

She was flirting with him. She always flirted with him, or let him flirt with her, but she was really flirting with him, this time. "Rose Tyler," he started, and then he noticed her eyes. They were dark and huge, dilated far too much. "Have you been drinking?"

"No, no, nope, no. Well, water. I like water. But nothing alcoholic."

"Right," he said. Couldn't quite believe her, because she sounded like... well, like him, actually, which was more than a bit off.

"You didn't miss me?" she asked, coming up next to him, her lips pursed in a pretty pout and... oh, God...

"All the time, Rose. All the time." He cleared his throat to bring his voice back up to the right register. "But did you find anything?"

"I met Carl and Steve and Chuck and Bob and Steve and Mike and Alvin and... oh, lots of blokes. Chuck is a grocery store clerk because he doesn't know he's clever and Steve's an idiot. Other Steve's not an idiot, but he's got a boyfriend but won't tell anybody. Alvin's parents obviously hated them, 'cuz his brothers are Simon and Theodore. And Bob had a blue tricorder, which was weird. And Mike has two kids by three or four different women - kidding, it's just two, but still, he never even tries to see them..."

"Wait, go back. Bob had what?"

"A blue tricorder. It had pretty lights, and I thought it was weird, but it was a toy, he showed me, sparkled and everything."

The Doctor sighed. Rose had obviously been drinking - he'd have to ask her about that later - but she had also probably found their alien, even if she didn't know it. "That's very good, Rose. Why don't you go see if you can wake sleeping beauty in there?" He gestured at the room Seven was having his nap in.

"Yeah, all right. Then can we dance?"

"If you still want to," he promised, since it was the only answer that seemed to make any sense.

Rose flounced off to do as she was asked and the Doctor sighed heavily. They'd need to go find Ace. He couldn't believe this. Rose Tyler hardly ever drank, even when she was terribly upset, even that one time he and Jack had gotten so torn up they were singing "You've Lost that Loving Feeling" at her in the console room. He filed that memory back where it belonged. It was supposed to be in the 'never, ever, ever remember this' file.

The door opened and Ace came charging in. "Doctor, where's the Professor?" she demanded.

Ace never looked worried, but she definitely looked worried now. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"I think Buttercup found the alien, but then I think he found her."

"No, no, she's all right. She came back a few minutes ago, I sent her to wake me."

"Uh oh," Ace said.

The Doctor shook his head. Memories were starting to flood back in. He was awake and aware again in the other room and the blocked memories were manifesting themselves as they happened to other him. He hoped he never did something like this to himself again, because it felt so very strange.

"Doctor?" Ace said, urgently. "I think they might have drugged her."

The memory hit simultaneously with Ace's words. The Doctor felt it as his face lost all trace of blood.

* * *


	5. Chapter 4: Waking Sleeping Beauty

  
Rose entered the darkened bedroom and smiled down at the sleeping Doctor on the bed. It was funny how the Doctor always looked so different when he slept. A lot of people looked younger and some people looked just the same. Jack always managed to look a bit older, she remembered, his face always careworn when he slept, though it never was in his waking hours.  
  
But the Doctor, any Doctor, apparently, not just her two, looked as ageless as he really was when he slept. It was as if all the things he closed away when he was conscious, the things that he hid all the time that were alien and so unfathomable, were clear for anyone to see then. Well, anyone who was allowed to see him sleep which, as far as she knew, included her and maybe Ace and no one else. (Sarah Jane had mentioned the Doctor never sleeping and Rose had lied and agreed with her for Sarah Jane's sake.)  
  
He was like a marble statue. Kind of beautiful, even this older younger Doctor with his strangely compelling eyes. He wasn't dead sexy like her first Doctor, and he wasn't pretty like her second Doctor, though he did still have great hair, she'd noticed. He was old enough that if she'd met him first, she might have made him a father figure like Ace did, although she wasn't entirely sure. She couldn't be trusted with older men, she never could.  
  
Rose stifled a giggle behind her hand. Her head felt a little funny, but that was ok. She was with the Doctor (her third Doctor, she suddenly decided) and that was good. She was safe because he'd be with her, just like her other Doctors, as soon as he was awake.  
  
And she'd been sent to wake him.  
  
Wake sleeping beauty.  
  
She'd read the stories, she knew how to do that.  
  
She climbed up on the bed next to him, shifting to get a good position. He wasn't snoring, that was good. Her other two Doctors snored. Maybe this one would, too, if he hadn't fallen asleep flat on his back in his trousers and his dress shirt. Still, he wasn't now, and she was grateful.  
  
She took a deep breath and leaned over him. OK. Perfect. He had nicely shaped lips, actually.  
  
She lowered her lips to his, kissing him softly and sweetly, smiling happily to herself because, really, this was exactly what she wanted to be doing.  
  


*?*

It felt so real, soft lips against his own, a tentative brush from the tip of her tongue. He opened his mouth to allow her entrance, falling into the kiss, letting himself go. He drifted away into the burning heat of her delicate, human mouth, the taste of her like her smell, all rain and moonlight and distant dreams of solace. There was something strange and sweet there, too. He felt her gasp, smiled into her kiss, felt her fingers thread into his hair. His hand found her and spread between her shoulder blades, steadying her, keeping her near.

Her tongue drifted back between her own lips and his darted after it, building a slow, languorous thrust into the gesture. She writhed against him. He smiled again, and drew away, to nibble now at the pouting lower lip.

She moaned and the sound of it burned through his body like wild fire. He whispered her name across her mouth, then kissed her again, teasing her this time, making her come to him.

Her sigh was sweet and precious, something he would never want to forget. It was also, he realized, suddenly and terribly, quite real.

His eyes flew open.

Rose smiled at him and brushed a hand along his face. "Hello," she said softly.

He stared at her and couldn't decide if he was thrilled at the experience or devastated because it could never be repeated. The door flew open and he forced himself to meet his own eyes.

Ah. Devastated.

*?*

"See?" said Rose, beaming proudly. "I woke him."

The Doctor stared. Seven stared back at him. "Is it homicide or suicide if he kills you, Professor?" Ace asked.

The Doctor was just starting to wonder about that himself. Rose bounced up from the bed, jostling Seven quite a bit, and the Doctor tried to remember if it hurt, as he hoped like hell it did. Rose bounded up to him, her eyes still huge and vague. "Do you need waking, too?" she asked, and before he could stop her (no, not really, but definitely before he could want to stop her), she flung her arms around his neck and snogged him thoroughly.

"I get to be in the middle," she sang softly as she sashayed out of the room.

The Doctor was afraid to ask and Seven's electric blue eyes looked just as thunderstruck as he felt. Ace, meanwhile, was crumpled against the wall, clutching at her sides as if she was in agonizing pain. The Doctor gazed at her in concern when he realized she was shaking.

"Ace?" Seven demanded, jumping up and putting his hands on her shoulders to steady her.

She pointed at him. "Your face," she exclaimed, then let out a hoot of laughter. "Can't breathe," she gasped, and laughed harder.

"Very funny," Seven grumbled, rolling that r around for all it was worth.

"Athlasht," the Doctor pronounced, suddenly realizing that he had a perfectly valid excuse for letting her do that. He needed to identify the drug, after all, and the glass she'd drunk from wasn't handy.

"Yes," said Seven, licking at his lips. The Doctor wondered if it was a paradox or just masochism if he punched himself.

"Was that a naughty word, Doctor?" Rose asked, poking her head through the door and smirking at him suggestively.

"We could all do with some tea, I think, Rose," Seven said. "Do you mind?"

"No, but there's not any. Americans, all that pushing tea and you'd think they'd know how to make a decent cuppa. Is coffee okay? Do you like coffee? He doesn't like coffee, but he'll drink it, and last you it was like 'it's liquid caffeine, just inject it into my veins, whatever it is.'"

"It was not," the Doctor replied firmly.

"Really? Then what was that thing on that one planet with the stuff and the... thing?"

He shook his head. "Coffee's fine Rose, thank you."

"You're welcome, Doctor. Well, Doctor Doctor. Well... I'm confused. I'll call you my Doctor... no, that won't work, 'cuz he's my Doctor, too, and last Doctor was my Doctor and..."

"Just go ahead and assume all Doctors are yours, Rose," the Doctor said softly. "You won't be half right. We'll sort out names later, ok?"

"OK, I love you, bu-bye." She kissed him wetly on the cheek and flounced away again, merrily taking at least one of his hearts with her, not a care in the world as she toyed with it.

Ace breathed slowly and carefully, still chuckling, and swiping at her eyes. "Buttercup's really stepped out this time," she observed. "I think I'd better go watch her."

"Yes, please," both Doctors agreed.

When Ace was gone, the Doctor turned and glowered at Seven, then laughed when he realized that the dark curls were sticking straight up like his own brown chaos. Seven was trying to fix it, and his dignity, but he didn't seem to be having any luck patching up either of them.

The Doctor could quite clearly remember his counterpart's annoyance, alarm, and utter chagrin. "All Doctors are hers?" Seven demanded, apparently deciding to go with annoyance.

"You got her _name_ right," the Doctor reminded himself.

"Shut up," Seven mumbled, looking sheepish and caught.

*?*

The Doctor sighed as he watched Rose bounce around the sitting room like a ping-pong ball. There was nothing they could do for her. The drug had to work its way through her system and that would take time. The caffeine would help, surprisingly, but they couldn't give her too much or she'd end up wired anyway.

She was, at the moment, singing, something appropriate to the situation, apparently, called "Banned from Argo". The Doctor had been to Argo, actually. Anyone could get banned from there, he'd done it at least six times. Mind, the scenarios the song described were very impressive ways to go about it. He would have preferred she not teach the lyrics to Ace, however.

"Jack's probably on the top of the list," Ten commented. "Mind, I don't think even Jack could come up with some of these things."

He looked at Ten and realized that the flippant, calm exterior was yet another version of his usual mask. Good to know, because his chagrin had been giving way to a dark, deep-seated rage. They could have hurt her and if it was too terrible for him to contemplate, how much worse was it for a Doctor who had her light shining on his life all the time?

Rose finished her song, giggling happily, and tumbled over the sofa. Ten caught her before she fell, his eyes blazing. "Right," he said, "that's enough of that. Let's go."

Ace, who had been drowsing intermittently between Rose's random fits of hilarity, jumped to her feet immediately and snatched her rucksack. "All right?" the Doctor asked her, concerned that she really needed her sleep.

"I'm just ready to blow up some scum-bags, Professor," she said grimly. She gestured at Rose. "That could've been me, and I don't think I want to know what I'd do."

The Doctor almost shivered and something very like fear blossomed in his chest. Ten glanced at him and nodded as if he'd made a point, but the Doctor didn't have to be told he was over-protective of Ace. He had a right to be - no one else had protected the girl since she was about six years old and she had always deserved better. Then again, Ten knew exactly what he was going to do to her soon, and only Ten's blithe reassurance from earlier was a comfort to him where Ace's future was concerned.

Mind, he hadn't promised that she would survive or prosper, just that the rest of her life she would think of him as a father-figure.

He shook his head and shoved it all away, while Rose tried very hard to be quiet. She was doing an impressive job for a human who had an alien upper and aphrodisiac pounding through her veins.

Of course, the drug also reassured him on her future relationship with him. Well... No, definitely reassured. If she really was... erm... intimate with him, no force on Earth would have stopped her with that drug in her system.

"Downstairs," Ten said, grimly. "We're going to search the hall, see if we can find any traces of the weapons dealers."

"Oooh, a plan!" Rose whispered excitedly. "And then Ace gets to blow them up! Boom!"

Ace grinned. "Now, you're talking my language, Buttercup!" she said delightedly.

Rose looked guilty and forced her mouth closed. "Sorry," she whispered, and reached out to take Ace's hand. "Just smack me if I say anything too stupid, ok?"

Ace shrugged, let the other girl take her hand, and then led the incapacitated blonde out through the suite door.

"Someday," said Ten, sadly, "maybe, somehow..."

"What?" the Doctor asked.

"Well, just, some times I wonder what it would be like to kiss her when she'll remember it."

Oh, right. That was a side effect of the Athlasht, wasn't it? "Maybe it's better this way, because if I know me, and I do, I wouldn't want her to remember anything that would embarrass her, now would I?"

"Shut up," Ten grumbled. Then, he shook himself and charged out the door. He snatched Rose and Ace's hands and the Doctor followed, a little bewildered. "Allonsy," Ten announced proudly while Rose giggled and Ace laughed.

When and more to the point why had he become so clingy?

* * *


	6. Chapter 5: Ticked off Time Lords

The Doctor let them into the darkened conference hall, and he and her other Doctor immediately got into a debate over which function of the sonic screwdriver was needed for this particular operation. Ace, obviously the most clever of the lot of them, immediately set about searching.  
  
"Stay here, Rose, and guard this door," her Doctor commanded her.  
  
Rose nodded and giggled. "Guard the door, guard the floor, guard ashore, guard some more..." She was feeling so very, very strange.  
  
But good. She was feeling good, too. That was nice. She leaned back against the door, but couldn't make the room stay still when she did that. Stupid room. It was getting really, really hot, too, this room, and she was starting to think that maybe her dress was the problem. It was cute and everything, this little dress, but it was sticking to her and trying to suffocate her. She couldn't breathe. The room was way too hot. How could the Doctors stand it? They were wearing even more clothes than she was.  
  
They should take some of them off. If they would pay attention to her, she would suggest it. Yes, very, very good idea. She leaned against the door again and sighed with frustration.  
  
There was something really, really wrong with her clothes.  
  


*?*

"How's Buttercup doing?" Ace asked as she climbed out from under one of the vendor display tables.

"Fine," said the pin-striped Doctor, from where he was kneeling, rummaging through a box of stuff he'd found under one of the tables. He was pointing his sonic screwdriver at everything, barely stopping to look at the readings.

The Professor was grumbling audibly. "This should not be this difficult," he muttered, dragging another box from under yet another display table. "It's not as if they're hiding Sontarans in here."

The Doctor chortled. "Just wait 'til you see what they do next," he said, humorously. "Haven't had a run-in with them recently, but I've heard."

"Oh, what?" asked the Professor. "I shan't remember and I could do with a laugh."

"They've shrunk," said the Doctor. "I'm serious. They must have had a bad turn in that endless blasted war of theirs, because they've all cloned themselves down to about four and a half foot tall - tops - now."

The Professor laughed merrily at that for a moment. "Micro-Sontarans," he offered, and the Doctor burst out laughing at the joke.

Ace, who had never seen a Sontaran, just shoved the box back under the table and dragged out another one. "Oh, look. Toy guns. Lots of toy guns. When all we really need are the real ones." The Doctor leaned over her and shoved his screwdriver into the box, probably making sure no real ones had been hidden in with the fake ones.

No such luck, of course. It'd never be that easy.

The Professor crawled out from under another table with a large, flat box. He pulled out a poster with one of the Orion slave girls on it, staring at it, a look of annoyed disgust on his face. "Is this supposed to be attractive?" he demanded, flashing it at the Doctor and Ace.

Ace snorted. "Not to me, Professor," she said. "I don't play for that team."

"You, young lady, are not old enough to play for any team at the moment," said the Doctor, sternly.

"Seconded," said the Professor.

"How old's your girlfriend?" asked Ace, smirking at both of them.

"Dorothy," the Doctor cautioned.

"Suffocation work on you?" she asked mildly.

"Right," said the Doctor, and dove back under one of the tables, apparently to hide. Ace grinned.

The next poster the Professor found to glower at was under a different table, and this one was of a scantily clad Klingon girl. "Really," he said, "what is the fascination young human males find with this sort of thing?"

"This from a man who went to pollinate with a tree," said Buttercup from right behind them.

The Doctor slid out from under his table and turned to her, a decidedly annoyed expression on his face. "I did not go pollinate with a tree," he snapped. "And didn't I tell you to guard the door?"

"Only 'cuz I gave you a curfew. And I asked it to guard itself," she said. "And it said it would, so it's fine. I can come down there with you, if you like."

He looked at her closely and his eyes widened. "Rose, go stand by the door and do not move from that spot. It's imperative, you understand me?"

"But it's so hot over there," she whined.

"I know," he said soothingly. "I'm sorry, but you have to do it. For me, please?"

"Aren't you hot in that coat?" she asked, softly, moving slowly toward him like a cat stalking prey.

Ace's eyes widened and she turned her head away sharply. Didn't want to see what was going to happen next.

"Oh, nonononononono," yelped the Doctor.

The girl let out a strange, gasping, growling noise. The Doctor bounded to his feet - you couldn't miss that, even if you were trying not to look. "Rose Tyler," he proclaimed, his voice like a prophet of doom, "you will go back over there, or I will take you home to your mother!"

Rose sobbed and retreated, but not before shooting him an absolutely horrified glance.

"And stay there, you stupid ape!" he added, coldly. Then, hands went into hair, and the Doctor danced around a bit, looking to Ace pretty much like he was panicking. He tapped the Professor on the back. "We have a problem," he muttered.

"What's his problem, Professor?" Ace asked. She got to her feet to go see to the still sobbing Buttercup.

The Professor's hand closed on her arm, firm and unmoving. "Stay here, Ace."

"That the way you do things on your planet, leave girls crying in doorways?"

"Ace!" the Professor exclaimed indignantly, "this is a bit more serious than that."

Ace glared at him, then turned to look at poor, miserable Buttercup. She blinked a couple of times in astonishment. Buttercup probably needed to have some time alone with that wall she was getting so friendly with. "Right," she said. "Have you considered the Vulcan nerve pinch?"

The Doctor made a chuffing noise of fury and exasperation. "Why is sodding Jack Harkness never around when you need him?"

"Hypnotism?" the Professor suggested.

The Doctor looked at Buttercup, looked at her like he couldn't decide if he wanted to stare at her forever or run like hell right now. "Yes, I suppose I'd better. Assuming it will work."

"Why wouldn't it?" the Professor demanded.

The Doctor just looked at him. Whatever was passing between them, which Ace didn't even try to understand, it obviously made it difficult for the Professor. His hands clenched into fists. "Don't tell me," he grated out at last. "Ace and I will be upstairs."

"What was all that, Professor?" Ace asked after they'd left the conference room.

The Professor sighed. "I'll just say that I rather expected better behavior of myself in my old age. Or at least less melodrama about it if I wasn't going to behave better."

"So?"

"So I've become an idiot," he admitted, defeated. "It's not a pleasant thought."

"Maybe you should tell him he's an idiot," Ace suggested. "He might believe you."

The Professor smiled and punched for the elevator. "I might just do that," he said after awhile.

*?*

"I'm not a stupid ape," said Rose softly as the Doctor approached her warily.

"I know you're not, Rose," he said with a sigh. "If either of us is stupid, it's me. I forgot this was what happened next with what they gave you."

"It hurts!" she whimpered. "I just..." She gasped as he touched her face, reaching for the right contact points. Completely out of her control, she arched into him, her body trembling as she fought it. "Don't touch me! I can't..."

"I know," he said. "I'm sorry." He kept his hold on her, his own hands trembling as Rose moved against him, trying to get away, maybe, trying to get closer, maybe. "Hold still, Rose," he pleaded. "I need to concentrate."

"I can't!!" she wailed. "Why can't I just..."

"I'm sorry," he said. He didn't think he'd ever meant it more in his entire life. Sorry this had happened to her, sorry she wanted to get away from him and he couldn't let her, sorry for how he was reacting to the way she moved against him, sorry for how unlikely this was to work, sorry for why it was unlikely to work. "Hush now, Rose," he whispered, in her head and across the lips that had managed to get too close to him. "Trust me?"

Her reply was instantaneous and so complete as to leave him utterly breathless. It was a sense answer, not a verbal one, just an utter surrender to him and whatever he needed to do to her to make this work. He shook all over. "Sleep," he whispered and she collapsed against him instantly.

He picked her up and held her close, alternating between concern for her, disgust with himself, and righteous rage. They had violated her, drugged her, damaged her. Even if she would never remember it, he always would.

There was a Storm coming, and he was it, and they deserved it.

* * *


	7. Chapter 6: The Morning After

Rose Tyler was feeling decidedly embarrassed as she walked into the convention hall that morning. She had absolutely no recollection of getting drunk last night, of even wanting to drink, but it was pretty obvious from the gaps in her memory and the way everyone was treading around her, like she was a bomb about to go off, that she had done so, and done something completely stupid while she was at it.  
  
She'd gotten up and, while the Doctors were refusing to meet her eyes and while Ace was in the shower, she'd gone back to the TARDIS to change. Amusingly, there were two sitting side by side in the car park and, when Rose touched the door of the one she was certain was theirs, she'd gotten the distinct impression of a couple of ladies gossiping for want of anything better to do.  
  
The TARDIS had provided her with an embarrassingly form fitting "Next Generation" uniform this time, with the red panel and captain's markers. She'd smiled though, and felt better automatically, as she always did in something red. But it would never do to wear a red uniform in Classic style, because she wasn't going down that easy.  
  
She wandered about the convention hall, and spotted her Doctor - _one of her Doctors? her brain suggested_ \- reading something. A quick glance to make sure he didn't see her, and she sidled closer to him, then rolled her eyes. Just as she'd suspected, it was a Klingon dictionary.  
  
She wandered away from him, tired and fed up. She had wanted to come to this thing, but now she just wanted to get the hell away from here and forget all about it. That meant finding these bloody aliens and finding them now.  
  
The Doctor was right, though. How could you find one alien in a room full of humans pretending to be aliens and aliens pretending to be humans pretending to be aliens?  
  
There was the other Doctor - _her other Doctor, her brain treacherously muttered_ \- and he had apparently gotten drawn into a philosophical debate. She tried to sneak past him, but there was suddenly a tug on her wrist. She looked down, saw the hook of a brolly caught around her arm, and then she was beside him.  
  
All Doctors were stronger than they looked, dammit all.  
  
He stepped away from his conversation and into her personal space, with absolutely no regard for how mortified she was feeling for... she didn't even know what. "Are you all right, Rose?" he asked, tender concern in his compelling blue eyes.  
  
She could have cried: blue eyes and the expression so familiar, it burned. "I... I'm fine, Doctor, thank you. I... I just want to find the aliens and get out of here."  
  
He nodded. "I think we're all agreed on that. Where is Ten?"  
  
"Ten?" she asked.  
  
"Your idiot Doctor," he replied, a bit coldly, she thought. He seemed to be a little upset about something.  
  
She smirked. "He called my ex-boyfriend 'The Idiot', you know, for the longest time." She shook her head. "Never mind. Something I can help you with?"  
  
"No." He shook his head. "Rose." He smiled as he pronounced her name, and the smile looked strangely out of place, just as saying her name had sounded like something he didn't really mean to do. "We're looking for anything out of the ordinary, and I'm afraid you're the only one who can tell what that really is."  
  
"Right," she agreed, feeling a bit dazed under the scrutiny of those eyes. "Hang about, though. If he's Ten, what number are you?"  
  
"Seven," he answered. "And it's fine if you think of us that way," he added, as he must have noticed her chewing at her lip, nervously contemplating if she could get away with it. He seemed more observant than her oth... Ten. It would be too confusing. She was starting, for some unfathomable reason, to think of him as her Doctor, too.  
  
_...Just assume all Doctors are yours, Rose..._  
  
She shook her head. "Sorry," she said, trying to ward that strange impression away. "I'll just go have a look round. Call me if you need something, yeah?"  
  
He nodded and she started off, but then he drew her back with the question mark shaped handle of his umbrella again. "Rose... all Time Lords have always been fools. It's genetic."  
  
And with that inexplicable parting shot, he disappeared back into the crowd.  
  
Rose stared after him and shook her head again, more confused than she had been before.  
  


*?*

Ace found a kid with a blue tricorder, and was just about to accost him to demand to know where he got it, when she caught sight of Buttercup, looking baffled. "You all right?" she asked, wandering over.

"Yes, I'm fine," she said, her lip trembling. "You... you know, catching aliens, what a life, eh?"

Ace smiled. The poor girl really was upset and didn't seem to even know why. "Well, look, the bloke you found last night had a blue tricorder, the Doctor said you told him. And that kid over there's got one, too."

"I... found?"

"Rose, give it up, it's not coming back. The Professor said. Just... don't worry about it, yeah? You're fine."

"Then why won't the Doctor talk to me?" Rose whispered.

"'Cuz he's an idiot in his old age. The Professor said that, too. He doesn't like it, but he said it's the truth."

Rose nodded and then something seemed to stiffen. "Right," she said, straightening up and tugging at her uniform just like the bloke on the telly did. "Right, well, if the Doctor's in hiding, then, someone's got to do it. Let's find these blue tricorders."

They walked over to the kid and Ace was all for snatching him up and shaking an answer out of him. He was probably fourteen, and she was only sixteen, so bullying boys seemed to be the easiest way to get stuff out of them to her. Buttercup, however, leaned over and gave the boy a winning smile.

"I want one of these!" she gushed, admiring the tricorder. "Where'd you get it?" he asked.

"Booth 67, I think," the kid said. He shrugged. "I... great costume."

Buttercup giggled fetchingly. "Thanks, I appreciate that. Think I look authentic?"

"Oh, yeah. I mean... wow, you just... you look fantastic!"

"Thank you so much," Buttercup said sweetly. "You've been such a great help." Then she kissed the boy on the cheek and he tottered off looking dazed and thunderstruck.

The girl shook her head. "Fantastic," she mumbled. Ace couldn't even begin to imagine what was going through her head, but whatever it was, she wasn't happy. "Right, blue tricorders."

"You're weird, Buttercup," Ace decided.

Buttercup grinned. "Thanks," she said, proudly.

*?*

The Doctor had been watching Rose since she got up this morning, watching her from the corner of his eye, checking for any sign whatever of symptoms or side effects. Or memories, that would be bad, too. He still hadn't worked up the courage to try to talk to her about it. Mind, he'd never worked up the courage to talk to her about what had happened on Satellite Five, either, so he was used to that sort of thing.

They would just finish this adventure, and he'd fling them headlong into another one, and they'd forget all about it. She would never ask - it wasn't her way. She never asked him anything personal until she'd gotten to the point that she either had to ask her question or risk murdering him with a teaspoon.

All he had to do was act perfectly normal and treat it like nothing happened and she would never think on it again. As soon as he remembered how to do that, he would see about getting on with it.

And then, she just had to turn her charm on a total stranger and let him see it. Actually, she couldn't possibly have known he was watching, since he wouldn't even look at her when she was right in front of him. She and Ace strode purposefully away and he set down his book and moved to follow them.

"Not so fast," said a soft voice from behind him. The language was not one commonly used on human Earth, being from a planet that had previously had, as far as the Doctor knew, no contact whatsoever with humans.

He froze because he happened to feel the unmistakably distinctive diamond barrel of a Mark 37 Laser Displacer right beneath his ribs. The Doctor sighed and moved to turn around. "Don't move, you," the man with the gun began.

"Wouldn't dream of it," he replied. "After all, you have the gun, and you are giving the orders and I suppose that means I have to go along with you."

"Yes, I think you do. Because if you don't, this is an extremely crowded room, and we wouldn't want anyone to get hurt."

"Oh, it's one of those is it?" the Doctor commented. Internally, he was hoping they could make this a quick and persuasive argument. Sometimes, he wondered though, why he ever bothered to hope, since it was so very rare that anything ever went his way right at first.

"My father sent you." It was an accusation, fully as angry as the Doctor had ever heard anyone threaten anyone else's life before. Interesting.

"Well, he would have sent someone else, but we were in the area, and I offered to drop in and collect you. I'm sort of in charge of the local wandering alien population, I suppose. Need a lift?"

The man behind him snorted. "No, but you will. Let's go, nice and easy, out to the parking area. And, just so you know, I've got a tracer on your partner, so if you try to get away, I'll blow her to hell."

The Doctor's blood turned to ice in his veins, and then it ignited. "You probably shouldn't have told me that," he bit off fiercely.

"Shut up," came the voice, and the Doctor was rather astounded to be suddenly getting a close up view of the carpet.

* * *


	8. Chapter 7: Alien Aliens

  
"Found 'em," Rose said, proudly, glancing at Booth 67 and away just as quickly to make sure they didn't see her.  
  
"What?" asked Ace. "Are you sure?"  
  
"Yeah, that's definitely them. See..."  
  
"Lemme go get the Professor," Ace interrupted.  
  
Rose nodded, and looked around for Ten. He had, apparently, wandered off or something, because he was no where in sight. Brilliant, fantastic. "So gonna hit him," she muttered, and waited for the other two, worry niggling at the back of her mind.  
  
The Doctor was 900 years old, he could look after himself, she told herself firmly. _"Which was why I've been rescuing him off and on since the day after I met him,"_ her argumentative memory prodded.  
  
Great. She'd have to find him. But first, she needed to tell Seven and Ace that these were definitely the aliens in question.  
  
"But they're green," said Seven, as he approached with Ace. "There seem to be a large volume of green people here."  
  
"No," Rose corrected him, drawing him out of the line of sight, "that's just it. Only women come green to these things."  
  
"You're not making any sense, Buttercup," said Ace.  
  
"S'not me," said Rose, with a sigh. "Look, you've seen the show, Ace, you know. The green animal women are women. There's never any green blokes to go with them, just the Orion slave girls."  
  
Ace nodded thoughtfully and Seven stared. "Orion _slave_ girls?" he demanded. "Is that what they're called?"  
  
Rose sighed. "Look, you can rescue the pretty green monster ladies later, all right?" she snapped. "For now, just trust me, those are your arms dealers and they're also the ones selling the blue tricorders to the kids."  
  
"And where have I wandered off to?" Seven asked.  
  
"I was just wondering that myself," said Rose.  
  


*?*

"So what are we up to then?" asked the Doctor, having come to rather abruptly in what looked and felt for all the world like the back seat of a Volkswagen. He was sprawled, face down, on the seat in question and, given his rather excessive height in this body, was marvelously uncomfortable, to say the very least.

He blamed the smell, personally, for reviving him.

No one answered him. He didn't even hear anything that indicated he wasn't alone. He tried to wriggle around to a more comfortable position and something slammed, hard, into the back of his head.

Maybe the boot, instead, he thought groggily, as he passed out again.

*?*

"Something's wrong," said Rose. "I... the Doctor..."

The Doctor blinked at her, considering. Her eyes had gone bright and huge in the light streaming into the conference hall from the high windows overhead. They'd almost turned colors, actually; for a split second, they'd looked gold, instead of brown. "Rose, are you sure?" he asked.

"No..." she said, uncertainly, chewing nervously at her lip between words. "No, I'm sure I'm just imagining things. I mean... you're old enough to look after yourself, and he's older'n you, right?" She tried to look cheerful, but the Doctor could see she was worried, fearful, baffled.

Did they have a link? A human girl and a Time Lord of Gallifrey, could they possibly be that close? She'd obviously seen him regenerate, since she mentioned "last him" on several occasions. She'd never mentioned how it happened, but it wasn't something he really needed to know. Or wanted to know, truth be told. Even Time Lords had a right not to know how they were going to die.

Others had seen regenerations, though. But she was one who had stayed. She had known him before and knew him now and, for some reason, held his hand everywhere. Not only that, but she presumed it to be her right to hold his hand, regardless. The Doctor couldn't find it within himself to argue with her. If he were honest with himself, which himself really did have coming, he would have to admit that he found the idea of a hand to hold quite appealing. It was more than friendly - it was supportive...

And he really didn't have time to dwell on all this right now.

"Right," he said, decisively. "Let's sort out this lot, first, why don't we?"

"Good idea," agreed Rose. "You want me to distract them?"

"No," he decided. "They might recognize you. Ace..."

"What do you need?" his companion asked, calmly.

"One of those blue devices, please. And no threatening."

"You take all the fun out of it," she teased, and loped off to the table.

"I really like her," Rose said, softly. "She's fun. Kinda reminds me of Jack."

"Jack?" the Doctor asked.

Rose chuckled. "Friend of ours. Travelled with us, hit on you constantly. It was hilarious. Last you was all tough and serious and Jack didn't take anything seriously. You even learned - or remembered - how to dance, just 'cuz he came on board. Spun me round the console, it was nice."

"How'd he leave?" the Doctor asked gently.

"He had to stay and rebuild the Earth. So far in the future..." She shook her head. "Never mind, I'm not supposed to talk about that, am I?"

"Probably not," the Doctor agreed. "However, I'm apparently going to block my memories of this incident."

"Yeah," she said. "Probably don't need to know about me before hand, even if you are gonna come back for me."

"Come back for you?" he said, incredulously. "What?"

"Well, you asked once, and I sorta had Mickey clinging to my leg, so I said no. Then, you came back and told me it was a time machine, and I couldn't resist."

"But..." Inside, the Doctor was reeling in astonishment. He couldn't remember ever actually asking anyone to come with him, and he was absolutely certain he would never ask twice. "Rose, you astonish me," he said, finally.

"Yeah," she agreed, cheerfully, "I'm good for that. Saved your life a couple of times doing that, you know."

He shook his head. "Where's Ace?" he asked, because she was right, he didn't need to have too much to forget. Already, he didn't want to lose the memory of her friendly face or her shining eyes. _Or her kiss,_ his memory prodded treacherously.

"She's... she was right there," Rose said, her eyes going huge as she looked every which way for the younger girl.

The Doctor muttered a quiet curse under his breath and charged toward the table.

There was a disturbance near the door to the hall. "Let me go!" Ace shouted.

"Right," said Rose and snatched his hand to haul him through the crowd toward Ace's voice.

*?*

Ace sauntered up to the table, trying to look non-chalant. Buttercup was right that these scum-bags had to be the arms dealers. Three kids left the table with the blue devices before it was her turn in the queue. "I want one of those things," she said, when the vendor turned to look at her.

He looked her over carefully. "I'm sorry," he said, "we've just sold out."

Ace tried to school her face into not revealing her shock, but honestly, his accent was a dead give-away. It wasn't from Earth and sounded like it came through some sort of mechanical translation. "All right," she said, "what else you got?"

He gestured at a selection of other bright blue and green toys in front of her, and Ace considered them, wondering if any of them might also be weapons faked to look like toys. She was just picking up and studying a lurid, green, fake phaser when she felt herself grabbed roughly from behind and a large hand over her mouth.

"Keep still," the heavily accented voice hissed in her ear, "or your friends will suffer."

She went along with him for a few minutes as he led her through the crowd, but when they reached the doorway of the conference hall, he got distracted by a gang of kids charging inside and she saw her chance. She twisted in his hold and brought her knee up automatically.

Of course, he was armored in that particular place. She groaned as her knee hit something pretty immovable and he leered at her. With the downstroke of the previous move, she hooked her leg behind his ankle and jerked, hard. He hit the floor like a pile of bricks and she took the opportunity to shout before he dragged her down on top of him.

The little green thing in her hand hit him squarely in the chest. She applied pressure, using the leverage to help her get up, and something clicked.

A puddle of filthy green goo spurted from the end of the thing, spraying the scumbag right in the face. He threw his hand over his eyes and started screaming.

"Get it off, get it off!"

Ace was reminded of old vampire movies for some reason. She looked around for some sign of what to do next, utterly unconcerned for her screaming opponent. The Professor appeared beside her, and a quick prod to the forehead with that strange trick he did rendered the alien unconscious. Buttercup was holding up a wallet, proclaiming them to be Product Safety Inspectors, and chasing off any passers-by with stern looks.

"Your girlfriend's smart, Professor," Ace said, shoving her hair out of her face.

"Are you all right?" he demanded, helping her to her feet.

"Fine. Well, I think I bruised my knee cap. Where're this bugger's mates, though? Because he said something about..."

Buttercup abruptly folded over double and crumpled to the ground.

There were two more green aliens standing over her. "You will come with us, or it will be worse for her, next time."

The Professor's blue eyes caught fire. Ace winced, and then, ever so slowly, smiled.

* * *


	9. Chapter 8: Of Storms and Champions

  
The Doctor woke in darkness to the screaming in the back of his skull. Something was wrong with Rose.  
  
She was with the other him, though, so he had to put it aside for the moment, had to do, or he wouldn't be able to help her. If he couldn't concentrate, if he couldn't trust that his earlier incarnation would protect her, then he would never even get back to her, forget saving her. He was trapped and lifting his head was out of the question, obviously. He gingerly moved his arms. OK, they weren't bound. Brilliant. He could feel the sonic screwdriver pressing into his chest.  
  
Careful, achingly slow maneuvering got the screwdriver into his hand where it belonged and he touched it without looking to the torch setting. He turned it on. Humph. Some kind of cell, not really the boot of a car, more like a coffin, really.  
  
A few more twitches with the screwdriver and he had ascertained that there were no guards in the vicinity. Good. Another twitch and the door above him flew open abruptly. He wriggled around - he was in a smuggler's hole, how undignified was that - and stood like Death rising from his tomb.  
  
They had harmed Rose. They were going to pay.  
  


*?*

The Doctor turned to the burly green aliens, his eyes blazing, all his shields gone. Time's Champion had been invited to play their game, and he would. By his rules, though, because theirs no longer applied. They had forfeited by harming Rose.

He hardly dared think what he believed her to be.

"You have the weapons, then, don't you?" he intoned, dark power stirring within the words, a weapon he wielded by the blade. "You're in charge, aren't you?"

"That's right," the larger of the two remaining aliens said, uncertainly.

"You like being in control. You have the power, you can do harm. Harm to innocent girls, harm to children, harm to your friends. But that's all right, because you're in charge."

One of the two had already been reduced to tears, falling under the mesmeric power of cold words and blazing eyes. Ace was bending over Rose, not looking at him. Good, because he didn't like it when she saw this.

"You can even hurt me, can't you?" he mused, turning the full weight of his baleful attention on the smaller of the two, the one who wasn't already balled up on the floor, weeping. "I'm not armed, I'm just a man. I need to be put out of the way. You can do that. You're in charge."

The alien cringed and froze. The Doctor reached over and dropped him with a single touch.

Rose struggled to her feet, and smiled at him. He didn't bother to bank the fire, didn't even consider it. She could look into his baleful eyes, see the star fire, watch eternity dance. It would mean nothing to her. She saw only the Doctor, her Doctor, regardless of his appearance.

Ten was right. All Doctors were hers and always would be.

"Thank you," she whispered, and touched his face, her hot human hand a comforting fire against his skin.

He smiled at her and blinked as he replaced his shields, then returned the gesture. "My Rose," he said, softly. She nodded and grinned at him.

He hugged her tightly. "Ace," he announced, over Rose's shoulder, "we've got work to do."

Ace nodded. "Wicked," she proclaimed. Then, she reached down and grabbed the one alien who was still conscious - though gibbering - in a headlock. "C'mon, toad face, why don't you show us what you're up to? And if he's not scary enough, I've got a deodorant can that registers nine on the richter scale."

"What, seriously?" said Rose, detaching herself carefully from the Doctor's embrace.

"Oh, yes," said Ace, while her captive struggled.

"Fantastic!" Rose proclaimed.

The Doctor laughed.

*?*

The Doctor found himself on a spaceship. Every section of the lower decks - he'd scanned through twelve of them from the computer terminal he found - was taken completely with the small smugglers holes he'd been in. They were empty, though.

How very unusual.

He checked the ship's schematics and found it was decidedly odd. If he didn't know better - and he didn't - he would swear it had been designed to look like the ship on the television show. The problem was, the thing really wasn't suited for hyper-space. If it had a quantum drive, maybe - something neither he nor Seven had mentioned last night - or, if it had temporal engines that allowed it to behave more like the TARDIS than the Enterprise, then maybe, just maybe, it might almost work.

He'd thought they were here to pick up a badly behaved prince and stop a small-time arms deal. This ship, though, put the lie to what their mission really was. Something was going on, something major, and he had only one way to be sure. It was time to find the Prince and get some answers. He checked the map of this thing and headed up to the bridge, scanning constantly to have some warning if any aliens approached.

He reached a lift and couldn't help the grin. They'd even painted the doors red like on the show. What was going on here?

*?*

"The green devices are for those we wish to destroy," the green alien confessed grimly.

The Doctor, Ace, and Rose had him tied up in the drapes from their suite. Ace looked at the Doctor in horror, then down at the alien draped over the sofa, her eyes furious and frightened. The Doctor laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Did I...?" she whispered.

"The poison doesn't really harm us," the alien said, flippantly. He sounded like he was rolling his eyes.

"How many of the green devices have you distributed?" Rose demanded.

"Just the one," the alien said, grimly. "And she turned it on Kalpor. I told them this wouldn't work." He sounded exasperated. Rose was angry, but glad they'd caught the right one, the one who was obviously in it for a quick buck and would roll if he thought himself in danger.

"And what have you done to Rose?" the Doctor demanded.

"Wasn't me. Prince Mevlin did that, didn't he? No idea what the little weasel's really up to. He hired us, and I just do what I'm paid to do."

"And what was that?" demanded Rose, coldly, trying to sound like she wasn't the weakest link in this group.

"Recruit an army," the alien said, and he laughed like this was some kind of game.

Rose glowered. "How are you recruiting this army, then? Selling toys to sci-fi fanatic kids, doesn't seem like you're being too careful in your selection."

"Oh, but we are," denied the alien, still finding humor in a suggestion that horrified Rose. "Kalpor and Dervis were picking them out. My job was just to man the booth."

"Mind control," Rose decided. She looked at the Doctor for confirmation and he smiled and nodded at her.

"Some kind of hypnotic or telepathic field in the device," he agreed. "We'll need one of the devices to study so that we can disable them."

"Sorry," the alien jeered, "we're fresh out. Just like I told your pretty little friend."

"Why you little scum bag!" Ace shouted. She dove for him, and it was only the Doctor's restraining hand on her shoulder that prevented her from completing the gesture and probably pounding their captive to a pulp.

Rose thought she would have let her.

*?*

The lift opened up on a strange version of the Star Trek set. The Doctor sighed, absolutely, one hundred percent convinced now that something utterly insane was happening. On the view screen, opposite the lift, the Earth turned, merrily oblivious, as it so often was, to the death of the day hanging in the sky.

Back on Earth, other him had discovered that this whole incident seemed to involve some sort of mind control, apparently meant to recruit an army somehow. It explained, really, why he was remembering everything live action. He had to know what was going on for the other group, without having to break his concentration to delve in the vaults of his memory, and this was almost as good as having an active telepathic link.

If only he did, though, he could communicate back to them what he had discovered. He could keep a mental hand in Rose's. He could let them all know that this place was obviously madness.

"How the hell did you get loose?" demanded a cold voice from across the bridge.

"There you are," the Doctor answered flippantly. "I've been looking for you, and it isn't polite to hide from me when I'm looking for you. Honestly, what would your father say?"

"What do I care what that passive old idiot has to say about anything?" asked the Prince, stepping into the light. The Doctor noted, with interest, that he was kitted out to look rather like a young version of Mr. Spock.

"Come on, Prince Mevlin," the Doctor said, "the game's over, your ride's here, and it's time to get you back to Mdrestry. Your father's been worried about your safety."

"Don't be stupid," answered the Prince. "He just wants to brainwash me into the same old mould he's in. The Mdrestry are a powerful race, and all they want to do is sit around and count passing space ships."

"I would sympathize, but this ship is armed to the teeth. And recruiting an army, Prince? What are you going to do with them?"

The Prince fidgeted toward a control panel that was just out of his reach. The Doctor moved between him and it, letting time dilate as necessary to put him there faster than an eye blink. "Forget it," he said. "The only thing you're going to do is deactivate whatever you've put on Rose and anyone else you've tagged with your devices. You're very, very lucky, right now, that I'm in a forgiving mood. There are rules about people like you, you know, and if I weren't a born rule-breaker, I'd be dealing with you by the customs of my people."

"Your people," the Prince sneered. "Ancient, decrepit, and dead long before they ever disappeared from existence. They had the power to rule the entire multi-verse, and what did they do? Nothing."

Rage was building inside the Doctor's skull, an ancient, titanic rage that carried the Storm and was, in turn, carried by it. "You know nothing about my people," the Doctor replied, and it was all he could do not to reach for the Prince and wring his thin neck.

"Oh, but I do," the Prince said with a cold, bitter laugh. "I know who you are, Doctor. The Last of the Time Lords, all alone, because your wonderful people wouldn't even fight to save their own lives. Too caught up in their apathy and their superiority to even notice as the Universe was torn to shreds around them. My people remember the Time War, the War that never happened. And we remember the evil that ended it."

"Then you know better, I should think, than to challenge me. I'm not the sort of man who deals lightly with destroyers, and I will not see you play games with the Earth. It is mine to do with as I please, and I will protect it."

The Prince laughed. "There's no one left to defend you, Doctor, nothing for you to fall back on. You're all alone and the Universe will do very well without you. I will take Mdrestry and destroy you, and my people will replace yours just fine."

The Doctor jumped toward him, infuriated. The Prince jumped out of the way and caromed off the console the Doctor had been defending. His fingers touched one big blue button and there was a sudden, clawing ache inside the Doctor's head, something like a pivotal thread being wrenched sideways, wrecking the whole tapestry as it went. The rage was blasted away by enormous, towering fear.

"What have you done?!" the Doctor demanded, even as his mind searched, frantically, futilely, for Rose.

*?*

The Doctor led his companions back into the Conference Hall, determined to find the first person with one of the blue devices and snatch it away. He let Ace go in first, keeping a hand on Rose, not even sure why, now. He was worried for her, there was nothing else for it. Until they got the devices disabled, he was absolutely convinced that she was in terrible danger.

Ace snagged the nearest blue-painted kid the second she walked through the door. "She's got one," she said, holding the kid firmly by the back of her odd tunic.

Rose sighed. "Let her go, Ace, this isn't her fault. We need to see that blue device you're carrying," she added to the blue painted girl, kindly.

The girl stared at them and, with trembling hands, gave the bright, sparkling device over to Ace. "They said it was for an RPG," she said softly. "Told us that everyone who had one would be eligible to play. Me and my friends all got one."

"I don't blame you," Rose said gently. "Unfortunately, we think there may be something wrong with them." She trailed off and looked around. "Doctor?" she asked.

"Yes Rose?" he said.

"He's... there's something wrong, I'm sure of it, this time," she said.

The Doctor frowned. Definitely a link, then, and he wasn't even a little surprised, not any more. "What do you feel, Rose?" he asked.

She turned and looked at him, while Ace toyed with the little machine, trying to figure out what made it work. Her dark eyes were huge and blazing. "Rage," she said, softly. "There's a Storm coming."

The Doctor shivered.

Ace pushed one more button and then, suddenly and completely unexpectedly, something very, very strange happened.

A vivid blue beam exploded from the end of the device. It hit Ace in the face, and then caromed off her in waves, washing over several people who were standing nearby.

All the other devices in the room also seemed to light up, their beams having the exact same effect. The Doctor glanced at Rose in concern, and was nearly floored by what he saw. Her eyes had gone distant, misty, and he could feel abject terror clamoring for his attention inside his skull. What was happening?

Rose looked around her, seeming puzzled and confused. Then, her eyes fell on Ace with the blue device. "Right," she said, firmly, an odd tone in her voice like she'd had yesterday when she began telling them what to do, only... more so.

"We need to get back to the ship," she said, decisively. Then, she reached and touched the fake little gold device on her chest. "Transporter room?" she said. "We need to beam up."

The Doctor gaped at her in astonishment, then stared at Ace in horror as the girl took a position at Rose's side.

A massive teleport washed over the room and suddenly, everyone in it was gone.

The Doctor was left standing there alone, gaping in anguish, confusion, and rage, at the kidnapping of an entire Star Trek convention.

* * *


	10. Chapter 9: Captain WHO?

  
The Doctor blinked in astonishment as a massive surge of energy activated and shook the ship. Confusion turned to fury as he realized it must have been a teleport. "Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?" he demanded, snatching the Prince by the collar and holding him at arm's length.  
  
The lift doors opened behind him and people started filing in. Most didn't seem to notice anything, just took places around the room, seating themselves or standing by consoles, hands reaching automatically to touch instruments set before them. The Doctor gaped at them as they started exchanging information with each other, describing the position of the ship, its orbit, its trajectory.  
  
"Brainwashed," he growled, tightening his grip on the Prince, "the lot of them."  
  
Mevlin smirked at him. The Doctor dragged the brat closer. The lift doors opened again and the Doctor's massive brain tried to detonate inside his skull. Ace entered and took a position next to the door, didn't even look at him. "Captain's on the Bridge," she said.  
  
He stared. There was really nothing else he could do. The purported Captain entered and glanced around the Bridge, nodding with a kind of hazy eyed satisfaction that made the Doctor's blood run cold. Then her eyes fell on the little tableau of Time Lord and Prince about to throttle each other.  
  
She drew some sort of weapon from somewhere. "I'm Captain Rose Tyler of the Federation Starship Enterprise," she proclaimed. "I insist you release my First Officer and identify yourself at once."  
  


*?*

The Doctor clutched his umbrella and swore quietly to himself, angry chiming syllables muttered from lips used to hiding them. He took one last look around the Conference Hall and pivoted on his heel, racing toward the TARDIS. He had to get a lock on this thing, find out where they had taken Ace and Rose, and get them back.

And where was Ten in all of this? Rose had said he was in trouble, but the Doctor didn't have time to worry about himself right now. Ten could surely take care of himself and if he couldn't, he still wouldn't thank himself for putting anything over Rose and Ace.

He knew - or theorized - that Ace, at least, would be safe enough. With a full paradox surrounding the circumstances, though, nothing was certain, not anymore. Two of the same Time Lord in the same place was a dangerous thing, in the same way that, oh, say, a Dalek in a nursery was dangerous.

He patted the older TARDIS as he walked by and She chimed an angry, _"One of you had better fix this,"_ at him. He bit back a sarcastic reply and unlocked the door to his TARDIS.

She hit him in the face with an irritated, _"Where have you been?"_

"Busy playing paradox," he replied acerbically. "What have you found?"

 _"I need her,"_ the TARDIS told him. _"I will have her and she will have me."_

"I didn't mean the future," he complained. "I meant now. You know you're not supposed to tell me these things."

Above him, the dome unveiled itself. For a moment, there was a brief view of the Earth blue sky. Then, it faded to black, the star field of an upper level Earth orbit. A ship drifted into range, an enormous battle cruiser that looked stately and elegant as it hung suspended from the jewel-encrusted night.

It was absolutely impossible.

He took a note of the readings. "Shielded?" he demanded. "Well enough to keep you out?"

She chimed an annoyed affirmative.

He sighed and set the coordinates to put the TARDIS into a matched orbit with the ship.

*?*

"I said let him go," Rose repeated, calmly.

The Doctor frowned and his enormous brain started ticking over evidence, facts, and suggestions at, approximately, fifty times the speed of human thought. He released his hold on Mevlin, first, because she wasn't budging on that point.

Rose obviously had greater autonomy in the mind control than the others seemed to do. Some of the motley and assorted crew seemed to be paying attention, but very few of them. Most were caught up in their, apparently, assigned duties. When the Prince had tagged her, he had put a different device on her than the one controlling the others, for some reason selecting her to be in charge. Why?

The Prince had spotted the Doctor and knew who he was and had chosen Rose to keep him under control. That was the only possible conclusion he could reach. It would also destroy him to see Rose in charge of a destructive operation, which was apparently what this ship was intended to perform. Plus, if she broke free or was freed later, it would destroy her to have done it.

All right, that was a potential for disaster. But Rose had been given the Captaincy. To an extent, it had to be possible that she was allowed to think for herself.

If she could think for herself, then she could draw conclusions about him and about Mevlin that weren't in the original game plan. She could make decisions based on that.

He wracked his mind. She thought Mevlin was her Vulcan First Officer. She thought he was familiar. Meanwhile, she thought the Doctor was a stranger. He needed a way to insert himself into this fantasy, a way that would make sense to her, that would make him familiar. Even if she didn't trust him, he could prove himself. And Mevlin could be disproved easily - Vulcans were supposedly unemotional, but he was willing to bet the TARDIS that the Prince couldn't maintain the facade under provocation.

He had read an awful lot of books last night, but it was obvious that this scenario was based loosely on the second series, the one he hadn't seen. Then again, the Captain was female, and...

Insight flared. He'd forgotten about it, or shoved it aside, anyway. There was a variation, with a female Captain trapped with a crew that hadn't been hers to start with, and he'd seen every single episode, twice. He'd forgotten because he'd only watched it listlessly. It had taken him seeing this ship to connect it with the old Star Trek series at all. At the time, he had been at the Brigadier's, still trying to figure out how he could possibly be the Doctor, since the Doctor didn't kill and the Doctor didn't lose and the Doctor certainly didn't destroy everything. He'd tried to shove most of those days out of his head.

It had taken Rose's small hand to remind him who the Doctor really was.

But never mind that, now. He remembered... God-like powers over time and space...

He grinned. Prince Mevlin flinched.

*?*

Back on Earth, an alarmed team of UNIT officials were busily writing off the disappearance as a publicity stunt, and trying to figure out what the hell to do. When one of them spotted the blue police box in the parking deck, the wave of relief that went up was almost palpable.

*?*

Security Chief Ace McShane noticed the threat on the Bridge almost as soon as the Captain did. She drew her weapon and put herself between the Captain and the dangerous alien with the eccentric clothes and the strange dark eyes.

"The Captain asked you a question. It would be in your best interest to answer it."

"You're out of uniform, Ace," the alien observed. "Tsk, tsk, bad form."

Ace was alarmed and appalled. "How... how did you know my name?"

"You don't remember me?" the alien asked, and then he pouted. He actually stood there and pursed his lips and made a face like a petulant child. "I'm hurt. Rosie, I'm seriously hurting here. The tragedy."

He vanished from sight and reappeared again between Ace and the Captain. Ace gaped at him. Oh, who was he?

"Doctor Q?" the Captain asked, glaring into his eyes with a look of frustration on her face.

"That'd be me, yep!" he said, and popped the p. Ace wanted very, very much to hit him.

"You've changed your appearance," the Captain said grudgingly.

"Bad habit," he shot back. Then he grinned boyishly. "I heard you liked 'em foxy, Rose. What'd'ya think? Am I sexy enough for you now?"

"Go away," the Captain answered, folded her arms across her chest, and turned to her first officer. "Mr. Mevlin, we have top secret orders from Star Fleet that have just come through. I'll need you to set up a briefing in thirty minutes. Doctor Q, my Ready Room. Now."

"Captain," said Mevlin, "I don't think it's wise for you to be alone with him."

"He won't hurt me, Mevlin, just try to drive me insane."

The first officer looked completely dubious and Ace, as Security Chief, had to agree with him. "Captain, I think..."

"I think, Chief McShane," interrupted the Captain, "that you should make sure the cargo is secure."

Ace started. She'd completely forgotten about that. "Yes, Captain," she said, and headed for the lift. She assigned several underlings to guard the Ready Room door with a quick series of nods and gestures, and headed for the lift.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" the Captain demanded behind her. "An engraved invitation?"

"S'long as it doesn't come from your mum," answered Doctor Q.

The Security Chief shook her head and wondered what the Captain could possibly be thinking. She suspected, really, that Captain Tyler had a bit of a soft spot for the lunatic menace, but she supposed it was almost all right, as he'd always seemed to have a bit of a soft spot for the Captain in return.

*?*

"What's your top secret mission, then, Rosie?" asked Doctor Q the moment the Ready Room doors closed behind them.

"And you honestly believe I'd tell ya," she said incredulously.

"Oh, c'mon, Rose," he teased persuasively. "We're best friends, and don't best friends share secrets?"

"We are _not_ best friends," she snapped back at him.

For a single, heart-breaking instant, his beautiful face looked so utterly devastated that she seriously considered taking her words back, maybe with a soothing apology and a kiss to his cheek. Why did he always have this effect on her, why? His face cleared, quickly, though, and he smirked at her, winking flirtatiously. "Of course we are, Rosie. We're friends, and we're the best. Kinda like your boyfriend Adam, remember him?"

"He wasn't my boyfriend," she answered, coldly, wondering how Doctor Q knew anything about Adam, who she'd considered dating for maybe a half a day before he'd managed to get a lot of people very nearly killed by making a selfish mistake involving alien tech and time travel.

"Sure he was, that's my point. He was your stupid ape friend, and he was definitely a boy. Don't think I've met twelve year olds who were more boy-like than that pretty little git. Unless you preferred me referring to him as a pet? And then there's Rickey."

"Mickey," she corrected automatically. "God, you're so irritating. Thought you were supposed to be a superior life form. What's with all the jealousy, then?"

"Oh, I am jealous," he whispered on a low, throaty growl. His dark eyes went darker, looking her over closely in a way that really, really should have made her feel uncomfortable, or annoyed. Certainly, absolutely not... like this. "I'm jealous of any man who looks at you, Rose, and I always will be. Very possessive, my species. We keep what's ours."

She trembled, fighting off the sudden, intense feelings he inspired in her. It had always been like this, whether he was big-eared and sexy and sinister or small and dark and sinister or tall and gorgeous and sinister. It just wasn't fair. Human women weren't designed to respond to the same man no matter what he looked like, were they?

"What do you want?" she demanded, crossly.

He advanced on her, and the way his body moved, suddenly, like a dancer and a predator all at once, she felt the urge to run away. Or throw herself into his arms and damn the consequences. He leaned over her but she backed away. His mouth formed a single word, but he seemed, at the last instant, to stop himself, to step back, to snatch some control from somewhere. "Your first officer is not what he seems," Doctor Q whispered.

Then, he pulled out that little wand of his and vanished.

* * *


	11. Chapter 10: Highly Questionable

  
The Doctor stepped off the teleport pad and swore quietly. He could make himself look like an all powerful alien by using the sonic screwdriver as a remote for the teleport. At close range, he could play with time, a little, let it stretch and bend.  
  
But none of it was going to work if he couldn't control the way he behaved around Rose.  
  
He'd meant to flirt with her, honestly he did. He knew from (no, really, he wasn't at all bitter) experience that Rose responded well to pretty flirts, and even he had to admit that his current form was quite pretty. Her fault, not that he'd ever tell her.  
  
But he'd not intended to go beyond it and certainly he'd had no intention of giving away one of his big secrets. He'd come far too close to giving her a one word answer that would have told her something he'd always meant to keep to himself. Even though he'd stopped that life-changing word, he knew he'd said too much. If she remembered this, after it was over, he would have a lot of explaining to do. It was a nightmare. To just announce it, admit his jealousy? This morning, he'd have rather taken poison.  
  
This morning, though, he'd had that active link with her. He knew how long the link had been there, what had forged it, how long it would remain. What he didn't know, hadn't known, was the profound effect it had on him.  
  
He'd always had to discipline himself to avoid opening the connection fully. He had reasons, hordes of them. But what he'd never realized until now was that, while the link was a liberty, it was also a restraint. He kept her close in his head and it made it easier to ignore every other way he could keep her close.  
  
Then some stupid alien with a mind control device had to come along and set up a psychic field that interfered with his link with Rose, and he was learning things about himself that he really didn't think he should have to know. He'd always known what the link meant, but he'd never had to face up to it as a fact.  
  
Prince Mevlin had known, too. So had that solitary, wretched Dalek.  
  
And now, he had to put it aside, stand on it, tamp it down, and he wasn't sure he could.  
  


*?*

The TARDIS hovered in a geo-stationary orbit, about fifty yards off the port bow of the impossible ship. "What about a scan?" the Doctor demanded. "Can you get me life sign readings?"

The monitor beneath his fingers filled with the ornate circles and archane symbology of Gallifreyan print, giving him a summary of the scan. The readings found seventeen different kinds of aliens, most of them human. He selected the non-humans and checked the detailed lists, chuckling over the Navareenos and the lone Actinchin. Good thing their disguise technology was good. Purple blobs and vividly yellow cephalopods would have been obvious even given the mass assortment of faked-up alien life they'd seen below.

There was a large party of Streerax, which worried him. So much for a simple arms deal. If this ship was any indication, they were seriously branching out of their usual minor trouble making. There was also, he noticed, about half-a-dozen Mdrestry. So the Prince Ten was looking for was working for, or had hired, the arms dealers he'd come here after. Or they'd captured the kid and his entourage when they'd taken the others, the Doctor supposed that was at least possible.

He doubted it. In his line of work, coincidences like this just didn't happen. He couldn't separate Ace's signature from the rest of the human signatures, but there was a slight flux around one of the human signatures and, given the massive swirl of time lines around her, he was willing to bet that was Rose. She seemed to be moving around the ship.

The monitor beeped. He blinked at it in delighted surprise as it informed him there was a single non-alien signature bouncing around the ship. That signature could only belong to himself. Now all he had to do was find a way to make contact.

*?*

Ace smiled to herself as the last of the volunteers took their places. She was impressed with the array of lifeforms who had signed up to do their bit for the good of the Federation. She wasn't sure yet what exactly their mission involved, but she knew these people were vital to its success and she hoped they knew that she, at least, wished she could be fighting alongside them.

Maybe she would volunteer to lead them. The Captain might even let her. There wasn't likely to be a great need for Security on board the ship once they reached their destination.

Well, except for that annoying Doctor Q. She toggled the switch that kept the volunteers hidden just as the bright blue beam of super-charged particles filled the air to indicate his arrival.

"Don't shoot," he said cheerfully, the instant he fully materialized. "I come in peace."

"Pull the other one," Ace said, grimly. "S'got bells on it."

He laughed. "You should have heard me say that, last body. I had a Northern accent, can you believe it? Sounded like I'd just crawled out of a pub in a shipyard. Looked a bit like it, too."

"What do you want?" Ace asked, utterly incurious about what he did for entertainment.

"Wanted to see what you were up to down here. Nice smugglers holes, a bit snug for me."

"Go away," Ace said. "This is Federation business."

"You think?" Doctor Q said, his voice light and teasing, but his expression anything but. "I'd say it concerns a lot of people, all right."

"Do you want me to call Security?" she threatened.

"Thought you were Security," he replied. "Where's your rucksack?"

"Never mind," she snapped. "I'm busy and I don't have time for your games. Either tell me what you're trying to say or get out and let me do my job."

He pouted again and Ace rolled her eyes. That pout might move the Captain, but it meant nothing to her. She liked him better when he was short.

"All right," he said, and his tone became as serious as his face. "Your Captain is in danger and the First Officer is not what he seems. There's a disaster brewing here and you're about to be caught in the middle of it."

Ace was startled. "I thought you liked chaos. What do you care?"

"I may be the Lord of Chaos," Doctor Q admitted with a sigh, "but you and Rose are important to me, and I want you safe."

"I refuse to believe First Officer Mevlin is a danger to anyone," Ace told him, and she meant it, really. The First Officer was completely trustworthy, utterly above reproach, unlike the powerful and manipulative alien before her.

"Just... I trust you to believe what your instincts tell you is the right thing. You need to watch him, Dorothy Gale McShane. Watch him and see who you think you should trust." He vanished in the same blue light that brought him and Ace stood there, shaken to the core.

How in the hell did Doctor Q know the entirety of her detested given name?

*?*

Captain Tyler called the briefing to order by standing up and smiling winningly at everyone. Mevlin was there, and Chief McShane, Dr. Steve West, Lauren Cooper for Ops, and Alvin what's-his-face for communications. At a signal from Mevlin, everyone took out their tri-corders to get the information transferred. She was pleased with their efficiency, but not so pleased with herself, because she really couldn't decide why she couldn't remember one of her Bridge officer's last name.

"This is the planet Mdrestry," Captain Tyler began, gesturing at a planet that was being displayed on the screen behind her. "As you all will have heard, they've declared war on the Federation. Diplomacy has failed. War is inevitable now. Mdrestry is a very advanced planet and our only hope is a preemptive strike."

"Sounds dangerous," said Doctor Q.

The Captain rolled her eyes. Should have seen him coming, honestly.

"I mean, one ship, bunch of young people, the lot of you. Seems kind of silly to take on the whole planet."

"Go away," the Captain ordered, though she didn't expect him to listen.

"No," he answered, petulantly. Then, he grinned. "Go on, love, keep dazzling us with your astonishing top-secret plan."

She tried to shove away the little thrill that went through her at the endearment. Dammit, why did he have to be so... she didn't know what he was, but why did he have to be it? It wasn't fair. "Mr. Mevlin?" she said, asking the First Officer to carry on with the briefing. It wasn't as if they could get rid of Doctor Q if he wanted to stay, anyway.

The First Officer looked suspiciously at Doctor Q, who smirked back at him and quirked an eyebrow. "Go ahead," the alien said, "I dare you."

Mevlin seemed... unnerved? Captain Tyler blinked in surprise. She turned to Chief McShane and noticed that the other woman's eyes were narrowed.

"The plan is outlined on your devices," the Vulcan said calmly. "You all have your assignments, also outlined individually. There will be no discussions outside of this room in regards to this plan, as..."

"There aren't any discussions inside this room in regards to this plan," Doctor Q interrupted. "You'd almost think you didn't want anyone to know anything."

"You are not part of this discussion," Mevlin said coldly.

Doctor Q smirked. "Ah, put a sock in it, Spock," he teased playfully. "You just don't want anyone to know what you're up to. Rose, he's..."

"Be silent, you insolent lunatic," Mevlin snapped.

"I know you are but what am I?" Doctor Q ribbed, looking and sounding exactly like a little kid.

"Right," said Captain Tyler. "Security to the briefing room."

"Thank you, Captain," said Mr. Mevlin.

He wouldn't be thanking her in about two seconds, who ever the hell he was. Doctor Q was right. Doctor Q was also a damn nuisance.

As soon as the Security team joined Chief McShane, Captain Tyler straightened her uniform and nodded at them. "Security, please take this man to the Brig."

She was positively proud of herself and Chief McShane when the purported First Officer gaped at her in incredulous shock as they leveled their weapons at him and casually cuffed his wrists. "You can't do this, Captain!" he protested. "I'm the First Officer."

"If you are," she countered, "then you're possessed or something. I'll send Dr. West down to look in on you in a bit. Oh, Chief, if you could take Doctor Q as well."

"I don't want to go to the Brig, Rosie," he complained.

"Go anyway," she replied. "Impress me."

"Nope."

Chief McShane jumped on him before he could disappear. "All right," he conceded, as the Security team hauled the First Officer out. He shot the Captain a completely burning, wicked smile. "Didn't know you were into bondage, love. I'll have to remember that. Don't forget to come visit me."

The way he said "visit" implied such illicit, wonderful, devilish things that Captain Tyler knew her face easily matched the stripe on her uniform.

As the Chief led him out, he popped away from her and popped back in next to the Captain. His nostrils flared and he leaned over to whisper, darkly, into her ear, "Next time, you wear the handcuffs."

Then he winked at her and popped back to Chief McShane, where he let her lead him out, as meekly as if he had no other choice.

Rose Tyler, Captain of the Starship Enterprise, stood there in front of her crew with a flaming face and silently cursed Doctor Q, the Federation, the mission, and whatever had happened to her first officer. She forced a confident smile and restarted the briefing, demanding answers from everyone immediately.

She dismissed her staff to their assignments and went back to her silent swearing. She added Mdrestry to her list, and King Chishees and her ship and the idiots who had put it together.

And her damp knickers, which were definitely a problem.

* * *


	12. Chapter 11: The Loneliness of Command

  
Chief McShane moved automatically for the control panel to call the Bridge. Her Security Team members were sprawled in various places on the floor, all clearly at least unconscious. "Hold it there, you," she ordered Doctor Q, before reaching over to hit the Red Alert claxon.  
  
"That's enough of this," the alien said, coldly, staring with grim darkness in his eyes at the downed members of her team. It looked to Ace, really, as if he was as angry about this as she was. "Look at me, Ace," he ordered.  
  
She couldn't refuse, couldn't even alert the Bridge as to the danger that might be about to befall them all. Compelled by his demanding eyes and his preemptive tone, she could only turn her head and stare at him, unblinking. Things were swirling in the brown, star-flecked depths, shadows and mysteries and unimaginable distance.  
  
She was fifteen and signing up for Star Fleet... _No._  
  
She was fifteen and waiting tables in a space bar, no idea how she'd ended up so very, very far from Perivale... _Yes._  
  
There were family and friends all around her... _No._  
  
Her family had never been hers, they didn't want her, and her friends... _Yes._  
  
She was a trained security officer with Star Fleet... _No._  
  
She was... she was the girl who had destroyed a Dalek with a baseball bat. She was the one who dared to cry when it was required by law to laugh. She was the one who blew up a Cybermen ship, who would have given her life to protect mysteries and the Universe, who faced down the clowns and watched the circus burn, the girl who pulled the sword from the stone, the one who arrived just in time with the silver bullets. She was Ace, and she was not alone.  
  
She had him. A family and a friend, all rolled up into one man, small and so innocent at first glance, with eyes that hardened into blue steel at the first sign of any danger to her or to anyone. Companion, mentor, father...  
  
"Doctor!"  
  
"Welcome back," said the man with the merry brown eyes.  
  
Ace couldn't help herself. She hugged him, and he let her. "I'd hug back," he apologized, "but I seem to be chained up."  
  
"Sorry, Professor," she apologized and, with a few quick twists, she had the funny alien manacles removed from his wrists.  
  
"You called me Professor!" he exclaimed, and laughed with delight, his arms open now, to invite her into a fond and friendly embrace.  
  
They indulged themselves for a moment, and it was wonderful. Then, Ace pulled back with a laugh. "Buttercup's gonna murder you when she gets her head back." She shook her head, just picturing the scene the two would make. "Hell of a way to rescue your girlfriend, Professor, making her blush like that in front of god and everybody."  
  
The Doctor obliged her by turning a little pink, himself. "I think she'll forgive me. Just don't tell your Doctor. He'll want my head."  
  
She snorted as she remembered that her Doctor had called this one an idiot. "Never know, Professor. He might just cheer you on."  
  
The Doctor blinked at her in astonishment, then shook his head as if to clear it. He gave her that merry, puckish look, bright eyed and charming and more than a little mischievous. "Now, my Ace," said the Doctor, "I need your help. Here's what I want you to do."  
  


*?*

Captain Tyler sighed as she read the alert notice. Star Fleet were demanding immediate compliance with their orders. She chewed nervously at her lip. How could she be sure how far this utter insanity had gone?

Mevlin, her ever trust-worthy First Officer, had lost his temper at the crazy, interfering Doctor Q. Star Fleet was sending one ship to handle an entire war. She'd not gotten a status report from the brig, she couldn't remember half of her officer's names, she had a splitting headache, and everything seemed to be happening through a bit of a fog. And Doctor Q, her personal nemesis and nightmare, seemed to be trying to help her.

Nothing made sense.

She settled herself into the command chair and ordered the ship out of orbit, heading for, instead of Mdrestry, nearby Alpha Centauri. They could take the scenic route. It would give her time. Besides, the Doctor's ship, if it was around, wouldn't care for the short route - too many quasars, if she remembered, and the strange vessel hated them.

And now she was not only anthropomorphizing, she was deliberately acting in a way that would encourage the scourge of her existence to hang around. Her headache was getting worse, really.

"Course calculated and laid in," said Ensign Cooper. "Direct heading for Alpha Centauri, arrival in six point two hours at Warp Two after crossing the Hawking limitation."

Captain Tyler nodded to herself. "Make it so," she ordered with a grin. She'd always wanted to say that.

She sat in her chair, watching Earth fall away. They were heading into space on the adventure that was their lives. She was Rose Tyler, sole commander of her vessel, and she needed only a star to steer by to see the Universe that awaited her. Her destiny was her own, her future at her command as much as her ship. She needed only her crew to obey her, her ship to convey her, her strength and her mind to support her. She could have no sorrow in her for this lovely, lonely view. She needed no hand to hold.

She had never felt so empty in her entire life.

"I'll be in my Ready Room," she said. The moment the doors closed behind her, she lowered her head to her desk and wept.

*?*

The Doctor swore when the odd ship drifted out of orbit. The TARDIS chided him but, without bothering to consult him, She matched the course of the ungainly vessel, scanning it periodically to make sure it was even up to the tricks it was pulling.

He felt a tingling in the back of his skull. Of course! The ship's movement would set up a resonance in the telepathic field. If it used a quantum drive - and it would almost have to do - then the instant the small singularity that had to be powering the thing hit phase four, there would be a larger shift, large enough that... because their minds were so completely similar, if Ten had the same idea, they would be able to touch.

He touched a series of controls that caused the small temporal beam to lock onto the ship. Even if they crossed the Hawking limitation and dropped into hyperspace, the TARDIS would follow.

*?*

Captain Tyler looked up from her private introspection as a team of the troopers they'd been assigned came storming into her ready room. "What the hell do you think you're doing in here?" she demanded, when she realized they were heavily armed.

Mevlin stepped in after them. Rose reached out and triggered the Red Alert. This whole situation had gotten completely out of control. Mevlin smiled as nothing happened, and Rose felt herself shiver all the way down to her bones. "Captain, I have been ordered to place you under arrest for disobeying a direct order of Star Fleet Command."

"You're supposed to be under arrest yourself!" she snapped. "I don't even know who the hell you are. What are you doing to my ship? Where is my security team?"

"Oh, do shut up," he replied, contemptuously, dragging her close with a firm grip on her arm. "He can treat you like a goddess if it suits him, but you're still nothing but a generic little human, and no amount of defunct ancient law can ever change that. And I'm starting to despise you, personally."

"Guess that makes two of us, then," she retorted, and punched him in the solar plexus. She was almost certain it wouldn't help, might even get her killed, but she wasn't going to go along with any plot that endangered lives and made no sense to her. She might be a "generic human", but she was a good generic human and she wasn't about to let people be hurt needlessly if she could find a way around it.

Apparently, a direct attack on Mevlin was just the thing to surprise his green guards and completely confuse them as to what they should do. He doubled over and they all surrounded him while she ducked and scuttled toward the door. She shot a quick glance over her shoulder, noticed him reaching for his tricorder. The door slid open. She leapt for it.

All at once, she knew nothing but excruciating pain. She caught herself on the open door frame, sliding down it as her whole world turned to agony and then, mercifully, to darkness.

*?*

When she came to, she found herself sitting in a cell in the brig of her own ship. Doctor Q was sitting on the bench next to her, his dark eyes opened wide. She leaned over him, checking to see what he could possibly be up to.

Beneath her feet, she felt the slight surge as the ship shifted into Warp. Doctor Q didn't move, and it took her a moment of close inspection to even determine if he was breathing. Her hand sought his, taking it like it was the most familiar thing in the world, her fingers entwining carefully with his limp ones. Doctor Q, her nemesis, her constant bane, the flirt, the tease, the dangerously powerful higher being. All at once, he was the only person she could trust.

And trust him she did, on a level that was intense and personal and deeper than any sort of gained knowledge. It was instinct, practically, the sense that, no matter what would happen, this man, this stormy-eyed, crazy, face-changing alien, would always move to protect her. She lowered the fingers of her free hand to his wrist, because he still wasn't doing anything, just staring, unseeing, into space. Her fingers found the reassuring double beat of his pulse, and she smiled.

She might be locked up, she might have been captured in a mutiny, she might have no idea what was happening, and he might be relatively gone, but she was safe, completely safe. It was baffling and disturbing, but it was comforting, all the same.

She was going to make it, because he was here to hold her hand.

She squeezed his fingers reassuringly. Until he got back from wherever he was, she would keep their hands linked, keep their eyes locked, keep him safe. She needed him, yeah, but at the moment, if seemed like he needed her, too.

What the hell, she thought cheerfully. Even stuck in the brig was better with two.

* * *


	13. Chapter 12: Conjunction and Connection

  
Time rippled. Moments stretched. _A blank, black, impenetrable wall._  
  
Time rippled. A star that never was died... drew in... collected... refracted. _A crack._  
  
Time rippled. A small beacon did what it said on the tin. _Widening._  
  
Time rippled. A fallen star collapsed further in on itself. _A calamitous detonation._  
  
Time rippled. Identical and dissimilar all the same, beacon reached for beacon. _A nanosecond passed._  
  
Time rippled. Time bent. _Time touched Time._  
  


*?*

The Doctor fretted as he reached under the console and reprogrammed the phase manipulator on the temporal array. It was nice to know that, even if he was going to lose even more of his sanity - actually most of his sanity, if the chaos that was Ten's mind was any indicator - at least the genius would remain.

It took a moment for the induction of the new command and, for an instant, all the indicators went red. He glowered and, in the age-old tradition of Doctor and TARDIS, he forced the issue with a quick "kinetic redirect".

As he stood there shaking out his hand to block the little bit of pain, the TARDIS sang out joyful confidence in the new program and all the indicator lights went green at once. The beam connected to the impossible ship changed from a simple tractor beam into a wave-guide. He looked at the screen and smiled with intense satisfaction.

Ever so slowly, a small section of the alien shielding began to unravel.

*?*

"Well," exclaimed the Doctor, startling the small, drowsy person at his side, "that was a nice nap!"

Rose blinked at him blearily. "Was it? I missed out."

He smiled down at her. "How are you feeling, Captain?"

"Baffled and disturbed," she admitted. "And you?"

"Hopeful, my Rose. Hope's a good one, you know, the very best. Of all the emotions there are, and you know there's a whole panoply out there, an entire flotilla, really, I think hope's the one we should definitely go with. How many guards?"

She smiled, her eyes lighting up with such joy that he wondered for an instant if she had maybe broken the mind control programming without his help. "If they're using standard protocols, there should be two just outside the door."

He nodded. He knew he would have to remove the device from her, but there just wasn't time, and he'd need that, and privacy, to do a complete scan. He had to be sure that it would do no damage to her body and even less to her precious mind. As he thought about it, he wondered if it might be a two Doctor operation.

This situation was infinitely more complex than it had seemed at first. He's had the mistaken apprehension that Seven was here by wildest chance, but now he had to suspect that it might be by design. The Legends always said that Time Lords were capable of, indeed unable to prevent themselves, doing very strange things in defense of... of someone like Rose.

He shook his head and popped up from the bench, dragging her with him, her small hand tight in his. Where it belonged, where it always belonged, where she belonged.

He looked at her, she looked at him. Her eyes shone brightly, even through the haze. His breath caught in his throat. She trusted him, now, as she had always done...

His hand came up to cup her cheek. "Oh Rose," he whispered, couldn't help himself. "Oh, my precious girl. I'll bring you back to me, soon, I promise."

The look she gave him was utter incredulity. Of course, to her, there was nothing believable about what he'd just done, not in the dream she was living, not even in her real, waking life.

If he didn't get this mind control off of her, if he didn't get the link reestablished, and soon, it was entirely possible that he would no longer be responsible for his actions.

Well, not _really_.

*?*

Ace moved through the narrow jeffries tube, her muscles aching a bit from the long climb and the longer crawl. The Doctor had explained what needed to be done, but she wasn't sure this was going to work without his help.

In truth, he wasn't either, but she knew that what he needed to do couldn't wait. Not even knowing this him very well, she could tell that what was happening to Buttercup was making him a little crazy. Well, a little crazier than usual.

She reached the end of the tunnel. Whoever designed any space ship she had ever seen except the TARDIS was an idiot: she'd long since come to this conclusion. She touched that weird blue device, the cause of all of this, to a slot that looked like it had been designed for it. She'd stolen this one off one of her downed guards, just in case they caught on to her and went looking. Hers was in "her" office.

According to the schematics the Doctor had memorized and recited, this should be engineering. She listened for voices and then stepped out, walking past the random, zombie-looking people who were shifting from place to place around her.

They thought they were doing jobs, the Doctor said. Or, rather, they were doing jobs, but they thought they were supposed to be doing. Every one was under mind control, everyone in the place was hypnotized to some degree.

He'd said she was easier to remove from the weird psychic control because she wasn't part of the original program and because her mind was her own. She was used to ignoring the status quo, he'd said. And if he hadn't looked one hundred percent truthful as he said it, she could still give him the benefit of the doubt. He was the Doctor - the Professor - and he kept secrets like most people kept photos and old letters and such not.

She scanned the room briefly with a careful gaze. Everyone here was under deep, it seemed, and there was no sign of the green blokes or Prince Mevlin's group of Mdrestry supporters, who were not controlled but actually part of the plot.

She found the computer bank he'd sent her after, sat down, and began to work.

*?*

Doctor Q scanned his little device over the door and checked something. "Two guards, well done," he murmured to her. "Right. We need to get to Engineering to join Ace."

"Chief McShane is with us?" Captain Tyler asked. She couldn't even describe how relieved she felt to know this.

"Yep, Ace and I are on your side," he said. "Prince Mevlin of Mdrestry is not going to succeed in his little plot here, Rose. I'm not letting it happen."

"He's _from_ Mdrestry?" she demanded. "Oh, that explains so much. But what's he up to?" She watched, unprotesting, as he ripped open a section of her bulkhead and began to rewire bits of it with his hands and intermittent flashes from his device.

As he worked, he answered her. "It's a very long story but it had to do with a philosophical difference between himself and his father. I'd normally let them argue it out, but they got others involved and then..." Doctor Q broke off and looked deep into her eyes. His were blazing, all righteous fury and ancient darkness, a storm held scarcely in check. "He broke the Rules. There are Laws against... against what he's done, what he's still doing. I have to stop him."

There was something heart-stopping in the way he said that, and something unspoken in the words he said. She wondered, all of the sudden, what he tasted like. She licked her lip, then chewed on it, startled at the intensity of that sudden curiosity and the fire it sent pooling in her belly.

His nostrils flared and his whole body trembled briefly. "Right!" he exclaimed. "Work to do." He turned back to the bulkhead and she wondered, really, if it was her imagination that his hands were shaking as he did it.

"Can't you just pop down to Engineering?" she asked.

"Yes," he agreed, "but I can't take you with me. Or I can't be sure I can take you with me without hurting you. We're going to have to go on foot and we need to do it undetected as far as possible. I don't want anyone to notice we've even left the brig. So those two out there are going to take our places in just about..."

A shower of sparks flew from the wall. The doors opened and the two guards raced in, looking confused and furious.

Rose didn't think, she just ducked the one who ran at her and kicked his feet out from under him. She knew how to do this, had watched them training for month. Them who, she couldn't remember, but now wasn't the time.

Whatever Doctor Q was doing, it seemed to involve popping around and a lot of flashing blue light. She ducked her attacker again, got a fist up, punched him in the face because she didn't remember what she was supposed to do at this point otherwise.

He grabbed her roughly by the arm, spitting blood, and dragging her towards her cell again. His other hand came up, caught her throat, squeezed. Rose knew she was going to die here and she'd never even understand how it had happened.

Behind them there was a blinding flash. Her attacker froze, then dropped like a rubber ball. He even bounced when he hit the floor.

Her heart thundering in her chest, her head spinning with adrenaline and something else, the headache she'd had off and on all day pounding between her ears, Rose whirled. The other green guard was on the floor, Doctor Q's trainer on his throat, pinning the man to the ground. The guard's eyes were wide open, he wasn't moving, wasn't doing anything.

Rose yelped in horror as the trainer slowly lowered, regardless of the body under it. "Doctor, NO!"

His eyes flew to hers. They were so dark, so dangerous, and she hadn't seen that kind of rage in them since they were steel and gunmetal and blue and ice. Slowly, looking like he was fighting it every millimeter of the way, his foot lifted, moved away from his still prisoner, settled to the ground.

What happened next wasn't slow, in the same way that a collision between two hydrogen atoms in stellar fusion is not.

He moved toward her or she moved toward him. Either way, they came together. She grabbed his tie, or maybe he seized her arms, but either way, that was the hold they ended up with. His lips crashed over hers or she tugged him down to meet them.

The kiss was fire and ice at once, all rage and fear and adrenaline, teeth and tongue and moans like wind in mountains. He seized control, had to have it, that mouth that whispered such wicked promises keeping them with bruising intensity. His tongue captured hers, tortured it to submission and then invited it to dance. And dance it did, around and around, learning the taste of him, memorizing it so that she could never forget, never escape it. This was his kiss and it was hers, theirs, the tastes of rain and mysteries and moonlight and time all blending together into a perfect compliment that was the only kind of kiss that would ever taste right, feel right, _be_ right, ever again.

Her heart raced, the pounding in her skull increased. She whimpered and shivered and, vaguely, in the back of her mind, there was the strange dream-memory-idea that this was where she had once chosen to die, on these lips, in these arms. Where he had chosen to die instead. Where she belonged.

Forever.

When he tore his mouth from hers, when her lungs seized air and shredded it, she looked up at him and found tears standing in his eyes. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."

She decided, right there, that she would never understand him.

She also decided that she would die trying anyway.

* * *


	14. Chapter 13: Breaking Through

  
"It was going so well, too," Rose whispered.  
  
The Doctor nodded. He'd forgotten to scan this area with the screwdriver before they ducked inside to hide from Mevlin's Streerax and now they were surrounded by hypothetical crew people in this farce of a space ship.  
  
"They really shouldn't be in here," she added.  
  
"And they haven't even noticed us," he suddenly realized. They were under deep, just working, loading supplies onto a veritable flotilla of small landing craft. He would have taken the trouble to wonder what they were for, but at the moment getting through this room and down the corridor to Engineering was the imperative. "You know, I think... you might can just walk right through them, Rose."  
  
She considered for a moment. "Mevlin may not have given them any updates," she decided. "Can you pop over to the other side of the room?"  
  
He checked the shielding in this area with the sonic screwdriver before he answered. "Yes. I'll wait 'til you're through, though." He'd have to use the teleport; the bay was simply too large for a time dilation to get him through it without risking Rose's safety.  
  
"I don't want to leave you," she said, suddenly. She seemed more and more his Rose every minute they spent together, but the link was still broken, a jagged wound inside the already damaged emptiness of his psychic centers.  
  
"You won't be. But I'm not going to risk being in transit while you're vulnerable. Walk across the bay like you own the place..."  
  
"I do own the place," she interrupted grumpily.  
  
Honestly, she would make a decent ship's captain, but she was born too late or too early for that. He indulged briefly in an image of his Rose as a pirate queen, but it almost immediately tried to turn into a fantasy and he had to push it away.  
  
When he got through with Mevlin... He shook his head sharply and carefully unclenched his fists. "Rose, just go, you'll be fine. Wait for me by the door, I won't... You know what, let's see if they notice me."  
  
They walked together through the heedless crowd, careful not to disrupt the pattern of their movements. In the middle of the room, Rose muttered, "As you were," but she sounded very sarcastic. In the world in her head, she had every reason to expect these people to at least salute her if they weren't going to try to arrest her. Once they reached the far side, he remembered to scan the door and found it led to an empty corridor. They ducked through it, then Rose dragged him across the corridor and into a small, deserted briefing room on the other side of the hall.  
  
"What?" he protested. "We've got to move." He watched as she paced up and down the length of the room and then glowered at the door.  
  
"Something isn't right," she complained. "Several of those people are with security, they should have noticed me, even if the others were too caught up in their jobs."  
  
"It's the telepathic field, Captain," he explained, grimly, leaning against the table between two chairs that were pushed underneath it.  
  
"What, seriously?" she demanded. "But that's not what it's supposed to do."  
  
Mevlin had programmed her with awareness of it? He blinked in surprise. "Go on," he said.  
  
"Well, all it was supposed to do was make it possible for us to coordinate things easier, work together better."  
  
"And it would if it were a real field. My people used something similar. But Mevlin's highjacked it and is using it to control everyone instead, forcing them to do his bidding and nothing else."  
  
"That's what you did to the guards, then," she realized. "What all the blue light was - you caught them in his psychic field and, since there were no instructions for them, they just froze."  
  
"Have I told you today how brilliant you are?" the Doctor asked her, grinning at her and reaching for her hand. She was out of his reach, so he let the hand fall before she turned to him.  
  
"No, not today," she said, and grinned at him with her tongue poking out through her teeth. Then, she sighed and shook her head. "So why are we going to engineering?"  
  
"Because I can over-ride the ship's controls there, disable the weapons, maybe disrupt the telepathic field, too."  
  
"Will that hurt anyone?"  
  
"If we turn it off, yes, probably." He thought about a ship load of panicking humans and aliens, caught in a fantasy that had suddenly turned nightmare. "Rose, we don't have time for this, now, we have to move."  
  
"Fine," she agreed. "But I just want you to know... Mevlin wouldn't have been able to talk me into hurting you. I... I just thought you should know that."  
  
"Thank you," he said, and his hearts ached in his chest as the emptiness of her absence swept over him. He was bleeding out slowly without her, and he had brought this on himself, but there was something painfully wonderful about knowing that, even mind controlled, she still cared for him so much. "Allonsy?" he offered, gesturing at the door.  
  
"Before we go, I don't suppose you've got anything for a headache? My skull feels like my brains are trying to claw their way out."  
  
He shook his head sympathetically. "I'm sorry," he said, and took her hand.  
  
She shrugged. "Maybe that's a little better," she offered, and then led the way back out into the corridor.  
  


*?*

Ace was just putting the finishing touches on the Doctor's instructions, setting up the time delays and finding the flags in the system. Everything should be ready for him if he would just...

The doors opened and the Doctor came in, Buttercup in tow, then he turned and sealed the doors behind him with his screwdriver. "Right," Buttercup began, striding over to the console Ace was working at, "what do you need, Doctor Q?"

"Weapons control, engines, shields if we can get them, everything. And the telepathic field, I need to reprogram that."

"All right, I should..." Buttercup looked up at the ceiling. "Computer, acknowledge Captain Rose Tyler."

The word "acknowledged" appeared on several screens. Buttercup - or, apparently, still Captain Tyler - glowered at the words. "Is she still out of it?" Ace whispered to the Doctor as he came over to her other side.

"It's a long story," he said.

"All right," Ace agreed.

"Computer, transfer primary weapons control to this station," Captain Tyler ordered.

"Unable to comply," printed across the screen.

"Transfer engines control," she suggested.

"Unable to comply," the screen repeated.

Captain Tyler looked frustrated. The Doctor reached over with his screwdriver and ran the blue beam along the console.

Panels of light all over the room suddenly flashed yellow. The Doctor stared at them, appalled.

"That's the yellow alert," Ace said. "Geez, Professor, what'd you do?"

"Dunno," the Doctor replied, looking at the sonic screwdriver in horror.

*?*

The Doctor glowered at the TARDIS console. The beam was breaking down the weave of the shields, but it simply didn't seem to be working fast enough. He searched frantically for a way to conjure just a bit more power for the TARDIS to use. The really ridiculous thing was, if he could get through the shield, the TARDIS could siphon off the energy being generated by the quantum drive. But then, if he had enough power to get through the shield, he wouldn't need the power of the quantum drive.

Alarms sounded abruptly. The Doctor flew to the panel that was shrieking at him and toggled the thermal buffers, venting a vast sheet of rapidly decaying tachyon particles into the quantum slipstream. The TARDIS dropped out of hyperspace right behind the alien vessel, without even a small hiccup to disturb the wave guide.

Overhead, the dome parted and revealed the vastness of space. An enormous orange sun filled the majority of one quadrant of the viewer, and he used the tip of his umbrella to flip on the filter, toning down the glare. The ship slowed, the TARDIS slowed with it, and a planet gradually swam into view. A soft, yellow green world sheathed in fluffy grayish clouds took precedence over everything.

Mdrestry.

The Doctor shook his head and, in a sudden fit of brilliance, set the TARDIS to borrow all the loose stellar radiation in the vicinity. The unravelling patch in the shield widened and finally, finally, started to thin.

*?*

"Yellow alert," the speaker grilles all announced in Mevlin's voice. "We will be making orbit at Mdrestry in ten minutes. All hands prepare for battlestations at the red alert."

Captain Tyler snorted in disgust. "Are we even at war with Mdrestry?" she asked Doctor Q. "Or is this all just some game his people have managed to manipulate into place?"

"No, there's no war," Doctor Q replied quietly. "But there will be if I don't get this finished." He chased Chief McShane from her chair and flung himself down.

Captain Tyler smiled. "Thank you for all your help, Chief."

"Eh, s'no big, Captain," she said with a small smirk. "But I reckon we need to deal with that lot."

The Captain turned in surprise to look at the crew people Chief McShane was gesturing at. The entire time since she'd arrived with the alien, no one had seemed to even notice them, but all of the sudden, some of the crew seemed to have realized they were here. "Not good," the Captain observed, and dove between the nearest aware engineer and Doctor Q. "Leave him alone," she ordered.

"Captain?" the Engineer asked, finally seeming to realize who he was looking at, "have you lost your mind? He's a threat."

"He's not," said the Captain. "He's trying to help us. Something has gone wrong and he's going to fix it before any one gets hurt."

She was so intent on trying to persuade the one man that she'd completely failed to notice another reaching for communications. "Security to Engineering," the woman snapped into the panel.

The Chief dove for her, but it was too late. In fact, it was all too late. The Chief and the Captain tried to hold of the two crew members, Ace with fists and rude threats, Rose with offers of court martial. But even though they tried, it seemed more people were becoming aware.

Then, abruptly, all the panels flashed red, and Captain Tyler hung her head as the ship shuddered. "Phasers," she announced, and it hurt so much to think about it. There were people on the planet below, innocent people, who were dying, and it was all her fault. "Get to your stations," she ordered the two engineers, though she was utterly astounded when they complied. She wondered how long it would last.

"Hah!" shouted Doctor Q triumphantly. "There's the bunny!" A force field sprang into life, cutting their part of engineering off from the rest of the room.

The phasers fired again. "Bugger this!" the Captain shouted. "I thought you were going to stop them!"

"Just one more second, Captain," he replied calmly.

The door he had sealed was suddenly being pounded on. "Oh, now we're in trouble," Chief McShane observed, her face furious. She snatched up a chair and looked ready to fight off the whole world if she had to do. The Captain was absolutely astounded at the ready strength the other woman exhibited.

The ship shuddered yet again and the doors flew open. "Doctor!" the Captain shouted, at the same moment Chief yelled, "Professor!"

Rose braced herself for disaster but, before it could happen, a song suddenly shouted against the nagging pain inside her head. She was nearly blinded as her headache abruptly intensified. Doctor Q came up beside her, snatching her close with one arm, Chief McShane with the other. Mevlin and his green Stryrax guards streamed into the room. The Captain suddenly felt as if not only her head, but her whole body was on fire. She screamed in pain and felt the Doctor tug her closer in his arms.

"I'll kill her, Time Lord, I swear I will!" Mevlin's voice rang. "Surrender right now, or your partner dies." Through her teary eyes, Rose could only just make out that he was holding the blue tricorder in his hand, a finger held threateningly over a button.

Rose screamed again as a fresh wave of agony washed over her. Then, over her screams and the thunderous protests of the alien who held her, another appalling din broke loose, a miracle. Between the huddled trio and Mevlin's team, Doctor Q's ship wailed Herself into existence.

* * *


	15. Chapter 14: Broken

  
"Inside now!" the Doctor ordered and shoved Ace toward the doors. He cradled Rose into his body and followed Ace as fast as he could move with a human in his arms. Seven was standing just inside the doors, checking Ace over for injuries, and the Doctor passed his precious cargo into his hands. The TARDIS should be shielding Rose, from the physical damage anyway. Maybe he could even get back the link if they dropped into the Vortex, but that device had to be removed immediately. "Be right back," he said, and stepped through the doors.  
  
"Mevlin!!" he shouted.  
  
"Time Lord trickery, again," Mevlin snapped in disgust.  
  
"This is no trickery, Prince. This is your last warning and I'm only letting you have it because it's what she would want. Give this up and surrender yourself to your father."  
  
Mevlin laughed a loud, false laugh. "My father is a fool, Time Lord, and so are you. I have no reason and no intention to surrender."  
  
"Then you've done this to yourself," the Doctor replied coldly. He flicked the sonic screwdriver and the panel he'd been working at exploded into sparks.  
  
He stepped back into the TARDIS and closed the doors behind him, turning to Seven, terrified that they'd been too late. He couldn't feel her, didn't know if she was safe, what if...  
  
"She's alive," Seven said, still holding Rose close to his body, protecting her. "But I can't tell the extent of the damage."  
  
"Let's get her to the Med bay. Where the hell is it, again?"  
  
Seven sighed. "So you changed the layout?" he asked. This layout was, of course, brand new to him, the Doctor remembered.  
  
"There were reasons," the Doctor said, glancing over his shoulder at the enormous Omniscate hanging above the staircase. Oh, there were reasons, all right. He suddenly ached to curl himself up into one of Rose's kind and tender hugs, the wonderful ones that had sometimes been all his sanity had to cling to, especially in his last body. This layout was going to make him ill. "I'll take her. Can you take us planet side? I need to talk to Chishees."  
  
"Oh?" Seven asked, looking surprised.  
  
"Before he launches a counter offensive?" the Doctor suggested. He gently removed his precious girl from his other self's hold, turning her carefully so he could cradle her head on his shoulder.  
  
"Good point," Seven agreed and moved to the - in the Doctor's current opinion - overly complicated console. "Ace, could you remind him, please?"  
  
The Doctor followed Ace down the darkened corridors. He hoped Rose would wake up so she could see this place at least once. He hoped that Rose would wake up so he could tell her to stop him before he ripped Mevlin in half with his bare hands.  
  


*?*

When the Doctor arrived in the Medbay, he found Ten leaning over Rose's prone form, his forehead resting on hers, his body trembling. He glanced at Ace, who shrugged. "Give us a moment," he requested quietly.

She nodded and walked away, but not before she'd clasped his hand supportively for a moment. He watched her go, just to see if Ten could compose himself in that time and, when it didn't happen, he walked up behind his other self, making a point to step as firmly as possible.

"I can't feel her," Ten muttered. "She's here, I can see her, I can touch her, but she's gone. I need her, dammit, I need her back."

"We're on Mdrestry, in the grand throne room. Do you want me to talk to Chishees?"

Ten shook his head. "I'd better do it. It's my timeline, not yours, and there are things you can't know, not yet." Still, he didn't move away from their Rose, clutching at her still hand like a lifeline. "Why is she unconscious?"

The other Doctor should know that, but the Doctor realized that his other self was in shock and the shock was talking almost as much as he was. "The TARDIS is protecting her from the psychic trauma. She's had to block out Rose's psychic receptors to prevent the effects of the device reaching her. Unfortunately, until that device is gone, it's distorting her mind, blocking the bond."

"You figured it out," Ten said and finally stood to look at him.

"You're not exactly hiding it any more."

"I'm not exactly sane enough to hide it anymore," Ten replied grimly. "As soon as I talk to Chishees, we need to remove the device. It's already summoned up a temporal distortion - you - there's no telling what else will happen if the link isn't restored. I'll probably... kill someone."

"But Prince Mevlin caused this?"

"Yes," Ten agreed darkly.

The Doctor glowered at his other self, knowing the Laws, the ancient Rule that governed this situation, knowing full well what would unravel if they didn't enforce it. "Then his life is forfeit, anyway."

"I know," Ten answered. "But..." He looked back at Rose's still face, tears standing in his mad, dark eyes. The Doctor looked at her, too, and felt a deep, tired echo of the same towering, insurmountable ache of loneliness.

"Death's too good for him," they both declared as one.

*?*

The grand throne room of Mdrestry was in shambles. Chaos reined supreme, and the Doctor strode through it, Ace at his side. She insisted she was just moral support, but the Doctor knew Seven had sent her with him to keep an eye on him. He couldn't blame his younger self for that; at the moment, he really needed watching.

"Chishees!" he shouted over the din of the Mdrestry preparing for war.

The King appeared, his beautiful face lined with worry. "Doctor?" he exclaimed in surprise. Then, he beamed. "Have you brought my son? Excellent, we'll need him to lead the defenders." His shook his head, sadly, joy disappearing. "We're under attack, Time Lord. It was completely unexpected."

The Doctor's hand went reflexively to the back if his neck. "Yeah, about that," he began, "you're not going to like this."

An older, pale eyed woman came running up to the king, her expression frantic. "The city shield won't hold through another barrage, my liege. We must launch a counter-offensive."

"Now just..." the Doctor began.

"I despise counter-strikes. It would be safer if we knew what they were doing. There's been no weapons barrage for at least five minutes. Have we got a visual at all?"

"I think you might want..." the Doctor tried to interrupt.

"The upper orbital sensor arrays were wiped out in the initial barrage," the woman replied. "Almost as if someone knew exactly how to strike to put us on an uneven footing."

"Yeah, funny thing about that," the Doctor began.

"Is it the Grovian? The Trydintrin? The Sontarans? Who?"

"It's not the Sontarans," the Doctor said crossly. "You can't fight Sontarans."

"He's right, my king, if it were the Sontarans, they would have already destroyed our ability to strike back. General Codin recommends we immediately launch the air ships to..."

"Will you people just listen?" Ace bellowed.

The Doctor grinned at her while the whole throne room fell silent. Even the repair crews who seemed to be collecting vast chunks of the palace ceiling stopped what they were doing. "Right," said the Doctor. "Now, I think you and I need to have a little chat, King Chishees, and it would be best if we did that now and in private."

"There's no time," the king protested. "Where's my son?"

"I'm the Lord of Time," the Doctor informed him, coldly. "And you do not want me to answer your question in front of all these people, do you?"

"My advisors, my people, my friends," the king answered. "It makes no difference. I must act to defend them before our enemy attacks again."

"Your enemy will not attack again, I've seen to that. How many dead?"

The king turned to the pale-eyed woman, who sighed. "About a hundred," she said sadly.

The Doctor nodded. "Then for those hundred people and the ones who love them, I think some privacy is in order."

Chishees nodded at last, and the Doctor and Ace followed him to a small, debris littered antechamber. The king closed the door after them, then gazed with an alarmed expression at the piece of furniture that had apparently been blown to splinters and kindling in one of the barrages. It might have once been a table, the Doctor thought. "I usually dine in here with my advisors. But tonight I was worried about my son and took supper in my rooms. His absence saved my life."

"He'll be so upset," Ace observed grimly.

The Doctor shushed her as Chishees glowered at her in offended disbelief. "She may be right, Chishees. Your enemy, the person who has attacked and killed your people, is your son."

"My... son?" Chishees stared at the Doctor. "You've no right to come here with such lies, Time Lord!" he declared. "I won't listen to them."

"Your son, Mevlin, and his friends whose names I didn't catch, hired an acquisition team of Streerax arms dealers and commissioned them to build the ship that just attacked your planet. He is using enslaved humans to operate the vessel and has willfully and knowingly broken the higher Laws. I'll turn him over to the Shadow Proclamation."

Chishees continued to gape at him in disbelief, in horror. Then, suddenly, something dark and very bothersome washed over the man's beautiful face. "I cannot allow you to do this, Time Lord. This was not our agreement."

The Doctor was starting to wonder if he shouldn't have let Mevlin get off a couple more shots. "I agreed that he would come back and be alive. He's back, and he's still perfectly healthy, though how long he remains so will probably depend on how badly he annoys the Judoon. He's a very, very unpleasant person, Chishees and, given the higher Law he's broken - repeatedly - he's very very lucky to be alive."

"Our agreement was that I would not invade your precious planet if you would bring my son back to me unharmed. He is not back with me. I will not let him be turned over to intergalactic scum over a bit of childish rebellion."

"Childish rebellion?!" Ace exclaimed. "He's killed people, he's enslaved people, and he wants you dead. I hate my mum but I've never tried to kill her."

"The passion of princes..."

"She's right, Chishees," said the Doctor, "but that was our agreement. You don't know what he's done, but you will. I'll see to that. Stand down from your wartime footing and I'll bring your son back to you, unharmed. What happens to him after that is on his own head."

"He is only a boy," Chishees defended.

"He is man enough to make war and man enough to take lives without remorse. Man enough to endanger the time continuum through his actions and man enough to defy me to my face. He knows what he's done and he's had more warnings than I've given anyone since before the War. Ace and I are going now, and we'll have him back within the hour."

The Doctor turned, took Ace's hand, and walked away. Before he left the room, he stopped and turned back. "I am sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry."

*?*

"Right," said the Doctor, "we need to remove that device from Rose and go collect the Prince. His father is holding me to my previous agreement."

Seven looked up and frowned. "What agreement? I thought you were just bringing Mevlin back so he didn't have to invade the Earth."

"That's what I thought, too," the Doctor replied, shoving a hand through his already badly mussed hair. "But he's turned it into an ultimatum. If I don't honor the letter of the agreement, he'll invade..." His voice cracked and went fast and frantic as he continued, "And I don't have time for this, I don't have time for any of this, I need to get Rose back..."

"The man's a complete idiot, Professor," Ace interrupted. "He's an idiot and he wants to spoil his scumbag brat, even though the little beast's killed people."

"Ace was brilliant," the Doctor added proudly.

"She always is," Seven replied, just as proudly.

Ace beamed at them both, then yawned. "Can I catch a quick nap while you sort Buttercup or do you need my help?"

"No," said the Doctor, "I think we'd better handle this alone." He gestured Seven back to the Med-bay.

* * *


	16. Chapter 15: Confessions

  
Two Doctors worked over the unconscious form of their precious patient, performing scans, setting up surgical equipment, prepping her with silent efficiency. There were no words, little need for discussions between them as  
  
two nearly identical minds worked in perfect tandem.  
  
"The link will need to be reasserted immediately," the earlier Doctor reminded the later one.  
  
"I plan on it," the brown-eyed Doctor insisted. "But why?"  
  
"Because according to the scans, she's become dependent on it, too." The blue-eyed Doctor gestured at the very obvious indicator on the screen, the one his other self had apparently ignored. "You talked to her when she was conscious; didn't she complain of a headache?"  
  
"She did," he agreed. "I didn't think." His head dropped into trembling hands. "I did this to her, I didn't think, I just..."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"She lived. She should have died, could have died, and I had to choose, to save the Earth or save her, and she chose the Earth, just stood there, not even knowing what I was going to do, how I was going to kill her, and told me to do it. I was so scared of losing her that when she lived, it literally just happened. I just meant to touch her, just to convince myself she was alive and... I only touched her, she let me in, trusted me so much, and I just made myself at home. So alone..." That last word came out, not in English but in the mathematically perfect, precise concept-words of their native language, making the "alone" both final and infinite.  
  
"And this is why I'll have to block my memories, then. Because you've finally managed to tell me too much. We'll be exiled again, cut off from the Matrix this time?"  
  
"Don't make me tell you," the older Doctor pleaded. "It's... wrong."  
  
His younger self nodded. "Then tell me this. She carries the bond so proudly, so willingly, even I feel it centuries into your past. She sees me as an aspect of you. She drew me here, her distress. The TARDIS actively wants her. Rose is part of us. Why, with all that, haven't you acted on it? She's yours, and willfully so. So why haven't you completed it?"  
  
The older Doctor ground his teeth, his face tight, his breathing heavy with rage and pain. "Look at her," he grated, his voice a threatening whisper. "Really look at her, tell me what you see."  
  
The younger Doctor frowned and did as he was bidden, looked at the girl on the bed, her still face, her strong features, her clenched hands. He considered her body with a whimsical smile, listened to the quiet susurration of her single heart throbbing in her chest. He looked at the tangled skein of golden Time that danced around her, an incredible, perhaps even impossible person who would have or had at one time had all of reality at her fingertips. He thought about her smile, her dark, gold-flecked eyes, the way she looked at him so proudly when she watched infinity burn in his gaze. He thought about the way her hand just seemed to fit and then, because he couldn't help himself, he let himself remember her kiss, the exquisite, wet, giving, pleading human fire of her.  
  
"I see a woman who loves me," he decided. "No matter what." He looked up then at the pain-haunted brown eyes of his later, darker incarnation. "Why?" he asked. "What do you see?"  
  
The brown eyes swept slowly over her form, then up to meet the blue. The shields were gone and there was horror in his eyes, so much loss and emptiness and pain that just went on and on and on. There was no end there, not anymore, even though there should have been, no suggestion, not even the faintest hint of the possibility of rest. The Doctor stared into his future and saw an echo there of something he hadn't seen since he was eight years old, something that made him run then and would make him run, apparently forever.  
  
He stared into it all the same. He was already running now, couldn't go any further or faster, not until whatever had happened to this Doctor and his impending fate finally met. "Well?"  
  
The brown eyes batted closed, the shoulders slumped, the head bowed, the proud Time Lord brought low by a truth he was loath to admit. "I see her dead," the older man pronounced sorrowfully. "I always see her dead and I always will."  
  
"Always?" the younger Doctor questioned intently.  
  
"Well, I saw her too young for so long and then... She did something... impossible. And I've been imagining her dead ever since, seeing her dying instead of living then, seeing her dying every time something goes wrong. She might live forever for all I know, but in my head I see her dead every time I look at her, and I'll have killed her every time."  
  
The Doctor reached over and flipped a switch, turning up the volume on the instrument that registered her beating heart. He let the single pounding metronome fill the room. "The rhythm of life - of her life and, through the bond, of ours - is there in her beating heart. Must even a Time Lord live in the future he fears, when the present is before him, full of life and joy? You need to decide, Doctor. It's not going to go away." He shook his head. "Your hands are shaking, I'd better do this. You just be ready to reassert the link."  
  
The older Doctor snorted. "I wouldn't be able to stop myself if I had to do."  
  
"I know."  
  


*?*

She is bathed in teal and starlight and the world is soft and still around her. She doesn't remember where she is, this world of light and dimness and so very much golden life, even though she knows with a knowledge that is almost instinct that this place is home. There is coral under her hand and music that she can't hear just out of reach of her senses. She doesn't know who she is, either, but she knows with a knowledge more basic than her label that she is where she belongs.

"You're safe here," a voice speaks. There's an echo, a vague presence where that voice seems to come from, the sound of it so beloved and familiar that she could forget everything else and still remember it.

"Should I be here?" she asks, because something about this doesn't fit right. She is alone, and the song is silent, and these two things are wrong. She must never be alone and must always hear the song, or else she is not who she is.

Whatever that means.

"Kinda funny concept, should," the voice replies. "Yeah, an' no, at least for you, let's say."

"Who are you?"

"You gonna ask me that forever?" the voice questions, sounding cheerful and perhaps there's a bit of fond exasperation in there as well.

"I should know, though," she insists, because it makes sense to her when nothing else does. It is her right to know and, in some inexplicable way, her responsibility as well.

"Well, for once it's a good question, I s'pose. Jus' a memory, me." There's a dim haze of presence near the center of this place, the suggestion of darkness and shadows and a wayward sort of beauty that isn't purely physical.

_"Rose."_

"What is that?" she asks.

"That? That's reality callin'. You should prob'ly answer it."

"Why?" she wonders. This place is home and she is nothing, what does it matter what she does?

"'D'you like bein' in the dark then? You? I don't believe it." There is conviction in the voice, in the shadows of a stance that is like a force of nature, a firm and unyielding, fundamental thing.

_"Rose..."_

She moves toward the doors, then turns back. "Are you sure?"

"Aren't you?"

"I'm alone. I'm... I'm not supposed to be alone, am I? Not now, not ever."

"Not you, Rose Tyler," the force of nature behind her agrees. "Never you." The way that voice says that name brings it back to her and brings tears to her eyes at once.

The doors fly open. _"Rose..."_

She looks out and there is a storm, a titanic, threatening, powerful, dreadful thing. It rages and rumbles and thunders, leaving devastation behind it, a path of destruction everywhere it touches. It should not be there, and yet it is, and the storm is screaming.

She hesitates. The storm is not safe. Of all the things she knows now or has ever known, this is one thing that is absolutely certain. The storm is chaos, a thing of majestic power, able to summon down disaster with a single bolt of lightning.

_"Rose..."_

But there is more there. She knows this, as no one knows. The storm is thunder and lightning and rage, but the storm is rain that falls on parched soil and wind that blows away blackness. The thunder is the warning, the lightning a physician's scalpel.

She looks back on safety one more time. She shakes her head, squares her shoulders. She is Rose Tyler. She has not chosen safe since the moment he came back for her. That storm out there, that absolutely necessary power that is renewal and life even more than it is destruction and death, it needs her. She has always, will always, choose it, choose him.

_"Rose!"_

She loves him, in all his thunder and lightning and rain, in all his aftermath and rampaging wake. She smiles, and takes a step, and the storm in all its terror and glory sweeps her up into the maelstrom.

*?*

Rose woke with a gasp like a reviving drowning victim. She coughed and choked and arms on both sides of her supported her, forcing her into a sitting position. She sighed. "My Doctor," she said proudly, sensing the familiar hands, the familiar touches.

She turned her head to the left, met the softened blue of the younger, older Doctor's eyes, and smiled gently. A memory brushed her, a stolen kiss, not the least bit chaste. "You got my name right," she teased softly and watched with satisfaction as he blushed rather adorably. She leaned in to hug him and he enfolded her in his arms, a fierce, fond embrace. "Love you," she whispered in his ear and kissed his cheek.

"Love you, too," he whispered back.

When he released her, she turned to her Doctor, her current Doctor, she supposed, because all Doctors were hers. He'd told her that, point blank, after all. He grinned sloppily, his bright brown eyes sparkling, his lips parted. She knew that look. He was about to explode with emotion, but rather than let it out, he was going to explode with white noise instead, words and words and words, saying everything, meaning nothing. "C'mere," she said softly.

"Rose," he whispered, leaning over her.

She hugged him tightly. "I missed you," she said. "I missed you so much and I didn't even know it."

He lifted her lightly from the bed, supporting her against his body as he buried his face in her hair. "I missed you, too. My girl, my precious girl. Oh, Rose, I missed you."

She realized he was shaking about the same moment she realized she was crying. She brought a hand up, petting his hair as he set her lightly on her feet, still holding her so tightly it felt like they might just melt together. Her voice was soft, her words like gentling a child. "Love, shh, love, don't worry, I'm not leaving you, not ever, my Doctor..."

He, too, whispered words of comfort, words of solace. "Rose, my Rose, I'm here, love, I've got you, I won't let you go..."

He held her until he stopped trembling, until her tears had dried. "What happened to me?" she wondered at last.

"You were attacked," Seven told her calmly.

"I remember. I remember everything. But it's like... when I was... It's all a haze, like I was watching it on telly or something. Although some things stand out." She realized that exactly as she said it, and felt her face go crimson as she turned to Ten, watching him squirm. She grinned, despite her embarrassment. "No, you're wearing the handcuffs next time, too."

Ten sputtered and Seven chuckled with delight. "Now that's not a secret I'd want anyone else to know," he observed dryly. Ten sputtered worse than before and his face shaded a lovely pale pink, bringing his freckles into sharp relief.

Rose laughed and brushed his face, and he snatched her back into a hug again, holding on to her as if she would try to get away. Shouldn't she say something? Shouldn't he? Maybe they should both, or maybe... He released her from the hug and smiled at her with that fond, proud expression firmly back in place. Rose realized then that, handcuff jokes aside, they were probably going to go on with their dance.

Any other day and at any other time, she was happy with it, more content with it than resigned to it. They belonged together and neither of them would do a damn thing about it. They had made it part of them, not just their relationship, and most of the time it was easy enough to accept. But... just... just maybe not particularly now. "C'mon," she said, tiredly, "we've got a couple of worlds to save or something, don't we?"

She turned away from them and headed for the familiar infirmary door, shoving it open and getting ready, mentally, to run for her life, same as always.

*?*

"Rose?" the Doctor whispered to her retreating back. He looked at his younger self, blinking in surprise. "What did I say?" he asked.

"Nothing," said Seven with an understanding sigh. "Same thing we always say."

"Oh."

"You really ought to fix this," he added. "She deserves better."

The Doctor nodded, even as his other self turned to follow Rose, leaving him standing there alone with the same weighty questions that always plagued him, plus the press of a knowledge he hadn't had when all this started.

Maybe it was time to make confessions to more than just himself.

"What the hell is all this?" Rose's voice echoed from the corridor.

He grinned and turned to follow them. There was time.

"Please," whispered the Time Lord, "please let there be time."

* * *


	17. Chapter 16: Parted from Me...

  
The TARDIS rematerialized on the decks of the pseudo-starship. Rose stood in front of the enormous double doors, her hand trembling slightly as she reached to push it open. "Are you sure this'll work?" she asked.  
  
"You're the Captain, Captain," Ten assured her. "They don't know any different."  
  
"You can do it, Rose," Seven added.  
  
"G'on, Buttercup," Ace told her, nudging her with a friendly elbow, "knock 'em dead."  
  
Rose nodded and squared her shoulders. They believed in her, and she couldn't let them or any of the people on this ship down. She shoved the doors open.  
  
"Captain!" someone exclaimed, excitedly. "You're safe!"  
  
"I was never in any danger," she promised. "As you were," she added to the crowd that had started toward her.  
  
"Captain, what happened to you?" the nearest officer - she thought he believed himself to be the medical officer - asked.  
  
"With some help from Doctor Q," she only just managed to keep from giggling over that statement, "we've managed to negotiate a peace with King Chishees. Where are we holding Mr. Mevlin?"  
  
A security team stopped in the doorway, turned, and dragged Mevlin back toward her. "Didn't get far with him, did you?" she asked.  
  
"We couldn't be bothered," Ensign Cooper answered with rolled eyes. "We were more worried about you and Chief McShane."  
  
"Chief McShane is waiting to take custody. I'll want the rest of his team rounded up, also." People scurried at once to do her bidding, leaving Rose and Mevlin and a few security guards to keep an eye on him.  
  
"Oh, don't you sound important," Mevlin snarled. "Stolen authority, stolen technology, just like all your wretched human kind. Does your precious partner know he's saddled himself with just another space rat?"  
  
"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Ace, from behind her. "Buttercup, let me hit him."  
  
"Wish I could," Rose said grimly.  
  
"And another little scavenger. You know he collects them?"  
  
"Shut up, Toad Face," Ace said in a voice that sounded calm and casual. Somehow it was more threatening than any amount of shouting could be.  
  
"I wasn't talking to you," Mevlin snapped. "I'm talking to the Time Lord's partner." He spat that last word as if it was an enormous insult.  
  
"He's my friend," Rose answered coldly. She didn't know what sort of arrangement Mevlin thought she and the Doctor had, but it sounded coarse and seedy to her, at least the way he said it.  
  
"Don't answer him, Buttercup, that's what he wants," Ace cautioned.  
  
Mevlin was suddenly laughing outrageously. "The stupid little urchin doesn't even know what it means," he yelped through his crude hysteria. "Not only has he stooped to take a filthy human, he picked an utterly oblivious one."  
  
"Rose?" The Doctor's voice, calm and comforting, came from behind her, and a wave of strength washed over Rose.  
  
"I think we might want to gag him," Rose told Ace, then turned to the Doctor. "Is that all right?"  
  
"Probably a good idea."  
  
"You should have let me get away with it," Mevlin told the Doctor. "Your little partner here is a complete idiot."  
  
"Or I could just break his jaw," Ace offered.  
  
"He's supposed to be unharmed," the Doctor said, and he sounded quite regretful about it.  
  
Rose reached for the scarf Ensign Cooper offered her. Before she could get around Mevlin to tie it, though, he jerked free of the guards' hold on him and stumbled up to the Doctor. "I'll still kill her if I get the chance," he told the Time Lord.  
  
Rose never actually saw where the Doctor's fist came from, just heard the loud crack and saw Mevlin drop to the ground like a felled tree. The Doctor was shaking his hand and swearing quietly under his breath. When he finally looked up, his dark eyes were blazing. "Bring him inside," he told Rose and Ace. "If I touch him, I'm likely to wring his blasted neck."  
  


*?*

They secured the Mdrestry, including Mevlin, in a small room the TARDIS manifested off the cavernous console room. Reluctantly, the Doctor bent over the Prince and repaired the injury to the young man's pretty face with the sonic screwdriver.

"How old is he?" Rose wondered. "They keep calling him a boy..."

"He's about fifty-five or so," the Doctor said. "Maybe sixty. About the equivalent of your age, Rose, not Ace's. An adult by his culture's standards, but only just."

"What did he mean?" she asked.

Mevlin was slowly regaining consciousness and, while his supporters were morose and seemed completely defeated, the Doctor most emphatically did not want Mevlin to say one more word to Rose. He checked the gag Ace had tied on him before she and Rose dragged him in here. It seemed secure.

Rose had left Ace in charge of her ship, claiming she was needed planetside, and no amount of protest by either Doctor had been enough to deter her. All they wanted was to keep her safe, and anywhere that Mevlin was wasn't a guarantee of her safety as far as they were concerned.

She'd managed to sway Seven to her side, however, by the simple application of that sodding " _my_ Doctor" smile she didn't even know she gave them. Seven's persuasion, "How are you going to convince Chishees if he doesn't see her?" won the day, and now Rose was here, asking questions he couldn't deal with.

"Not in front of the aliens," he said, calmly, and took her hand, leading her back out into the control room.

Well, it was supposed to be the control room. He looked around at the formless white room with three doors and sighed. The one they'd just come through had disappeared.

"Where are we?" Rose wondered.

The Doctor opened one of the three attached doors and looked through it. His suspicions were confirmed immediately as he noted his own room - random, ever changing, temporally disturbed place that it was - just beyond. "Your room," he replied. "In the future, anyway," he added, and closed the adjoining door before she could become aware of what was beyond it. Most of the time, she didn't know the door was even there, of course.

Or maybe she did. His recliner manifested almost immediately, followed quickly by her bed, which she sat down on, smiling.

The Doctor tried the door that should lead out to the corridor. It didn't work. He swore up at the ceiling, vowing to trade Her in for a bicycle, but She laughed at him. Rose was watching him curiously when he turned around. "We're locked in," he said sheepishly.

"Good," Rose replied. "Now, you can answer my question."

"We don't have time for this," the Doctor complained.

She gave him his own answer. "Time machine," she said, every bit as condescendingly as he had ever said it in his last body.

Right now, he'd like to get his hands on his last incarnation. Lonely, angry, stony-eyed bastard, this was all his fault. The current version of him would never have done this.

The TARDIS Herself snorted at him and a scene in the hospital on New Earth flashed before his eyes, followed by a nightmare memory image of Rose without her beautiful face. All the helpless rage and towering loss he had felt in those two instances flitted through him and he brushed against the link in his mind, feeling the comforting presence of it soothe him.

OK, so he always would have done. And if Seven was anyone to go by, it was highly likely ANY one of him would have done.

Rose had watched his face as his thoughts must have drifted across it, and now she stood, planting herself firmly right in front of him, where it wasn't even possible to avoid eye contact. "Doctor, what does he mean? He keeps callin' me your 'partner', an' I don't understand."

"Do you mind the term?" he grated. He knew he had no right to be angry with her but he couldn't help but feel instinctively rejected.

"No, I just..." She rolled her eyes. "God, there you go again, expectin' me to understand something that I've never even heard of before. All I want is a simple answer. Why does that brat keep calling me your 'partner', Doctor? Does he mean business partner or like partner-in-crime, or does he mean like, I dunno, he thinks I'm something I'm not or what?"

"Oh, it's something you are," he admitted, darkly, trying to avoid her, turning away. He didn't want to talk about this now and he didn't want to talk about it like this. He really didn't want to talk about it ever, but there was very little chance of getting away with that any time soon. Between the TARDIS, his earlier incarnation, probably Ace and, apparently, Rose herself, he didn't have a way out. Still, he turned firmly away from her, determined not to meet her eyes if it was at all possible to avoid it.

"What? I'm hardly your equal in anything, Doctor. You're smarter than me, stronger than me, faster than me, braver than me. Your business partner, your plus-one, your dance partner, _what_?? What exactly is it these Mdrestry people think I'm your partner in?"

" **Everything!!** " he bellowed, rounding on her, barely managing to keep the shield that held the bond out of her conscious awareness. This was supposed to be over. She was back in his head where she belonged and his emotions were back where he should be able to control them. His endorphins, his hormones, all his primitive instinctive responses were supposed to have leveled off.

But the bond remained threatened and, so close on the heels of the earlier threat, he couldn't stabilize. Worse, now the threat was internal, between them, and everything in him screamed at him, insisted on some primal level that he had to prove to Rose that she belonged to him.

She didn't even flinch from his fury. As she had when she stood between him and a Dalek, she glowered at him. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

His hands shot into his hair and he tugged at it, feeling like he was tugging at his control. "It's the closest thing to an accurate translation of a Gallifreyan word that encompasses... just... everything." Fretfully, he paced the length of the room, then turned back to her, watching her wide eyes, wondering if she was cottoning on, yet. He could find out... just lower that shield, just a little, tiny bit.

Gah, temptation!

"So they do think I'm something I'm not," she said grimly.

"No, they're right; you're not," he answered grimly. "You're completely wrong about all of this. Well, most of it. I am smarter than you. I'm smarter than everyone, though, so what difference would that make? Still the stupidest genius in the universe, or I'd've thought of some way out of this before I ended up in this situation. I'm strong, though, because you hold my hand. I'm fast because you need me to be. I'm brave because you're braver than anyone. You're... you're you, Rose Tyler, and that completes me, makes me what I'm s'posed to be. You're my other half, that's all, and they know it."

She stared at him, open mouthed, utterly incredulous. All the anger had drained out of her, just like her face had drained of color. "I... this... I..." She closed her mouth, swallowed hard, spoke slowly, something challenging in her tone. "Humans in my time use that phrase, too, Doctor. 'My other half' or, sometimes, 'my better half.'"

He shrugged and tried to change the subject. "That's why Mevlin attacked you in the first place, because he knew. They can see it, you see. And that's why he's got to pay for his crime. His are sins that beg vengeance and, in this instance, I've got no choice."

"There's always a choice," she said, quietly.

"There's..." He shook his head. "There's a choice whether he lives or dies, yes. But if his crime goes unpunished, it says something, and that something isn't true and I can't say it. You can't make me, Rose."

"Yeah, know that," she agreed. "Can't get a straight answer out of you for a damn thing." Mockingly, she continued. "I say, 'What time is it?' and you do ten minutes. I say, 'Where are we?' and you're all, 'Somewhere.' I say, 'What's wrong with you?' and you say, 'I'm all right.' I swear to you, the day you say that and it really is true, pigs will orbit the Earth."

"Been there, done that," he answered flippantly.

"Shut up," she grumbled. "All I'm saying is... Doctor, you won't tell me what's going on, an' I get that, you're just like that. You won't tell me things you don't want to tell me, an' I'm used to that. You have to see to it that the Prince doesn't hurt anybody else, ever, and I agree with you completely, but..."

"No, see, that's it. That's the point. He's a Prince, a King's spoiled oldest son. If I let him walk away, thinking what he does, being who he is, he goes on to find another way to kill his father and he becomes King and starts an interstellar war or something. And if I let him, I'll have given my tacit approval and I won't do that. I've got a responsibility here, to you and to everyone, to put him out of commission completely."

"But you can't just order an execution or something, Doctor. You wouldn't."

"Wouldn't I?" he wondered. He really wondered. She knew him, maybe better than anyone, but was she right about this?

"No, you wouldn't," she told him firmly. "You'd never. You're not like that."

"I nearly lost my mind, Rose," he confessed, tiredly. "I very nearly went insane without you there."

"Where?"

"Here," he answered, and tapped at his temple. "You're supposed to be here and you weren't and I came very close to out of control. That's what he did. A Time Lord, full of rage and without sanity, loose on the cosmos? It's a hideous prospect and, believe me, I've seen it before. And no one could stop me, Rose. There's no one else." He reached across the distance they had put between them and stroked her face gently. "I can't trust his father to control him and I can't trust him to ever change."

Rose shrugged. "I don't think anyone can trust him," she admitted grimly.

The Doctor blinked at her and everything fell into place. "Oh, Rose Tyler, you are a genius!!" he exclaimed. "Hah, completely brilliant, knew it. You always have the answer."

He bounced toward the door and Rose sighed. "I don't even know the question," she complained.

The Doctor turned and snatched her hands, pulling her behind him. "But Rose, it's perfect. Doesn't matter, I know the question. See, other half, told you so."

She frowned, but it wasn't her angry frown and he felt his hearts swelling in his chest as she shook her head. "You're mad," she told him.

"I know," he agreed.

"You drive me mad," she added.

"I know."

"Well, as long as that's settled, can I ask you a question, oh fountain of knowledge and wisdom?"

He was incredibly nervous, but nodded briefly. She had a right to one, didn't she?

"Why did you kiss me?"

He closed his eyes, wishing she'd asked him to tell her mother what he'd done to her, if she'd even figured that out, yet. "Because I needed to do," he admitted. "I'm sorry."

"What for?" she wanted to know. "It was... it was..."

"I know, but I still shouldn't have. It's not... I mean... I wasn't... I was... I didn't..."

She nodded, looking down at her feet. "I understand," she told her boots, though he was almost completely certain that she didn't. Her next words confirmed it. "You don't want that from me. It's ok, Doctor, I'll just... forget it or something."

She shoved the door open and walked away from him. The Doctor shook his head and felt his hearts breaking, again, for what felt like the nine millionth time that day. "I never will," he told the empty air.

* * *


	18. Chapter 17: And Never Parted

  
The time ship manifested in the damaged grand throne room, and Chishees was there immediately. The Doctors led the young supporters out into the throne room to consternation, gasps, and denials from various people standing about.  
  
"Your choice, Chishees," the Doctor said, grimly. "This lot can be tried by your laws in accordance with your customs, or I'll hand them over to the Shadow Proclamation. I have no problem doing that."  
  
Several well dressed men and women immediately set to pleading with the king, and he finally ordered the prisoners taken away by guards. "Where is my son, Time Lord?" the king demanded coldly. "I can see he's fallen in with an unpleasant crowd, and it would be best if his reform could begin immediately."  
  
Everyone, even his own people, looked quite askance at that. Seven stepped forward and smiled grimly. "Your son is the ring leader of this operation," he said. "All the others will testify to that, as will these documents and invoices we obtained from various sources."  
  
"His crimes will be dealt with according to our laws," Chishees said, in what was probably meant to be a reassuring tone.  
  
The Doctor frowned. "No," he said. "I can't allow that. There's a higher law involved here, Chishees, an older custom with the weight of law. He interfered with Time. He willfully and knowingly caused harm to someone who is not to be touched."  
  
Chishees ground his teeth together. It wasn't a good look for him. "I'll see that proved, Time Lord."  
  
"Yes, you will," Seven agreed.  
  
"His own little toy here should work," the Doctor said, holding up the blue device. "Know what this is?"  
  
"It's a standard field manipulator," Chishees replied. "We use them to control a variety of tools and implements. A single instrument can control several hundred devices if the operator is competent. The complex ones, such as this one, have biometric controls so that only the owner can operate them."  
  
"And this one belongs to your son?" Seven asked.  
  
"Yes," Chishees agreed reluctantly.  
  
"Excellent," said the Doctor, grimly. "And this function?" He gestured at the control that had operated the device used to hurt Rose.  
  
Chishees went pale. "It... it controls a telepathic morphotic inverter."  
  
"Which does what?" the Doctor continued intently.  
  
Hesitantly, the king said, "It is used to control prisoners. It scrambles telepathy and..." He swallowed hard. "It can be used to cause pain." Frantically, he added, "Only as a deterrent, though. Only in the cases of the most dangerous prisoners. It's sometimes the only way to reintegrate them into society. I..."  
  
"Never mind," the Doctor interrupted. "I don't want to hear about political experiments. But it's a mind control device that isolates an individual from any telepathic communication, correct? And it can be used to hurt or even kill a person?"  
  
The pale, beautiful king nodded very slowly. "I… I was mistaken. This isn't my son's device."  
  
The two Doctors looked at each other. "Why don't we let him try it?" the older Doctor decided.  
  
The younger nodded. They turned together back to the TARDIS and came out again with Mevlin in tow, still bound and gagged and still, despite all of this, openly defiant.  
  
Chishees studied his son's furious face, and he looked surprised but no longer disbelieving. He reached over and removed the gag from the boy's mouth. "What have you done?" he demanded.  
  
"What you should have done," Mevlin snapped back at him. "What any of you pathetic, weak-minded fools could have done. The Mdrestry are powerful. We can rule the universe, with the Time Lords..."  
  
"Stop!" the Doctor snapped before the boy could finish that sentence. Seven was staring at him in horror. "You've done more than enough damage to the continuum, Prince." He realized to his disgust that he was still shaking with fury.  
  
"Time Lord," Chishees spoke, weakly, "my son will have to be reeducated, taught to understand our ways. I have failed him, obviously. The punishment is mine."  
  
"No," said the Doctor. "He made his choices. He knew what he was doing. He knew who he was acting against. He knew the laws."  
  
"Old laws," Mevlin snapped. "Pointless, maundering, ancient stupidity designed to wrongly elevate an apathetic race of mendicants."  
  
"Those laws exist for a reason!" the Doctor replied. "Even we weren't aware of all the ramifications of breaking them. You're standing here looking at a temporal anomaly, a massive risk to the time stream, generated entirely by your actions. You knew what you were doing." He turned toward the TARDIS. "Rose," he beckoned.  
  
"A Time Lord of Gallifrey takes a tiny, pathetic little human being as a partner and I'm expected to respect that?"  
  
" _What?!!?_ " Chishees thundered. He stalked up to his son, grabbed the boy's shoulders and shook him, sharply, but only once. "Are you insane?" he demanded, panicked. "I could have protected you, even if you attacked the Doctor himself. Even if his partner had been another Time Lord, I might have..."  
  
Rose, looking completely baffled and very, very disturbed, stepped out of the TARDIS and took the Doctor's hand. The Doctor glanced down at their hands, thoroughly astounded. She'd been so angry when she left him before and, he thought, was still angry with him, now. Nevertheless, she supported him. Her commitment to him was stronger, he realized abruptly, than any momentary frustration she might be experiencing with his nature or with the way things were between them. He let his gratitude and wonder roll over the link, let it warm them both, even if she couldn't yet understand how it happened.  
  
Chishees rounded on Rose, looked her over quickly. The Doctor saw the very second the king recognized her marks and exactly what they meant. "Please, Time Lord, please," he begged, pathetically. "Spare his life. He didn't do this. That isn't his device."  
  
Rose squeezed the Doctor's hand. The Doctor shook his head at her and she glowered up at him. Sometimes the silent communication between them amazed him, since she didn't even use an ounce of telepathy. He nodded curtly and she nodded back.  
  
"His life is forfeit," the Doctor reminded Chishees. "But Rose wants it saved. However, this cannot go unpunished or unproved."  
  
Rose's touch gentled and soothed, now, offering comfort, offering her support. She believed he'd made a correct choice, even if she didn't know what it was. She was convinced that he was always going to be the better man. She believed that he was still capable of doing the right thing.  
  
He believed in Rose.  
  
"The thing is, Mevlin here is the heir apparent. He'll be king of this place and he's just as dangerous to you as he is to everything else." He turned from the king to the son and caught the Prince's eyes with his, compelling him by voice alone not to look away. "Don't think I didn't notice where the first barrage fell, Prince, even if your father refuses to accept it. I could have just handed you over to the Shadow Proclamation and let them deal with you. It might have been kinder, but your father wants you here, is utterly blinded to the harm you can and will do, to your own people, to him, to the Galaxy at large, to my Rose. It ends here, and it ends now. I gave you chances and you threw them in my face. Many people offered you choices and you willfully and defiantly chose the wrong one, time and again. Here." He handed Mevlin the blue device.  
  
"Your father says it isn't yours," Seven commented.  
  
Mevlin smirked and immediately reached for the controls of the punitive telepathic device. Nothing appeared to happen.  
  
The Doctors both rolled their eyes. "Worth a try," Mevlin said with a smirk. "She doesn't deserve to live." Still Prince Mevlin sneered at him, face cold and angry, unwilling, even now, to consider that he might have done any wrong.  
  
"My people had an ultimate punishment, you know," the Doctor said. "Not death, but endless life. I can't do that, but what I can do is see to it that you do no harm for the rest of your life. You'll keep your life, Prince. If you can manage it, you'll keep your throne."  
  
"What did you do?" King Chishees demanded.  
  
"I did nothing," the Doctor said. "Well, almost nothing. I did copy off his little implant, and I did give him one last chance. The rest, he's done to himself. Well, we did…" He looked inquiringly at Seven.  
  
"Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow?" Seven suggested.  
  
The Doctor nodded in grim satisfaction. "Yes, that. And when he toggled the switch just now, he turned on the inverted field. It applies only to himself, and it can't be turned off." The Doctor flicked the sonic screwdriver and the blue device in the Prince's hand began to give off copious floods of smoke.  
  
The Prince threw the device away and rounded on the Doctor. "I can stop this!" he shouted.  
  
The Doctor shook his head. "You can't. It's linked to your brainwaves. You disturbed my link with Rose, now you have a link that your life depends on as well. You project a telepathic field now, Prince, just a small one, but it'll keep you out of trouble." The Doctor glared at the seething youth. "I've returned you safely to your father's custody. You keep what you can. You'll never lead another friend astray, never successfully order a death, never unleash destruction. No one will trust your word, no one will respect your judgment, no one will accept your promises. No one will ever believe you, ever again, for the rest of your life. And I assure you, it will be a long one."  
  
He turned away, then, not pitiless in his judgment, but unable to bear the guilt that would swamp him if he thought about this too long. At his right hand, a younger Doctor walked, in shoes of a man who had already committed genocide more than once, only a few months from destroying his companion's faith, only a few years from destroying his whole world.  
  
At his left walked the only thing he had ever wanted in his entire long life. Rose Tyler, a human girl, who kept his hearts in her mortal hands, who might never understand even a fraction of what she meant to him. His fault, and if he never told her, then who else would he blame?  
  
He couldn't offer her anything that humans really wanted, not shelter, not safety, not even to put her first. All he could really give her, he already had done. Surely it would never be enough? Then again, she didn't know, and until she did, he'd never know, either.  
  
Eternity was a very long time to wonder what might have been.  
  
Behind them, Mevlin's voice rang out. "You can't let him do this, Father!"  
  
King Chishees knew that he had no choice.  
  
"Doctor, you can't do this to me, you can't!" The Doctor didn't pause. "I'll hunt you down and kill you both for this!"  
  
Of course, no one believed him. As his screams rose from outrage and anger to frantic hysteria, the world around him ignored him. No one would ever listen to Prince Mevlin of Mdrestry again.  
  
"Let's finish this," Rose said, sadly, as the TARDIS doors closed behind the three of them.  
  
Seven looked up from the console and met her gaze with haunted eyes. "I think that's best," he agreed.  
  
"Right then," the Doctor said, and forced a grin, "finishing it is."  
  


*?*

"Captain's on the Bridge," Ace declared, eyes sparkling, as Rose left the lift, flanked on either side by her Doctors.

Rose smiled back at her friend and fellow companion. "Thank you, Chief," she said with a wink. "Doctor, would you care to set the coordinates we'll need?"

The smaller Doctor walked down the stairs and gestured the helm officer out of the way while all around her the Bridge "Officers" bustled into protest of sound. "Do you know how to get to a place that exists slightly sideways in Time?" Rose wondered to the loudest protester - Ensign Cooper.

"No sir," the Ensign admitted.

"Chart a course to the coordinates he sets and we'll let the expert fly this bucket."

The Doctor's hands flew over the controls with only a few fitful moments where it seemed something wasn't where he expected it to be. After a bit, he turned to Ensign Cooper. "That work for you?"

She looked at the new data she'd been programmed to understand by the strange telepathic controls. "Yeah, think so." She did something, whatever it was that the ship required from the Operations computers, and turned to Rose. "Course plotted and laid in, Captain," she said.

Rose grinned. "Engage," she ordered and, with her Doctor so near to hand, it felt much better this time.

*?*

Ace leaned over the Doctor's shoulder, watching him work. She'd been at the helm bothering the Professor for awhile, but he'd said he needed to concentrate (and rolled that "r" around determinedly while he did it), so she decided to bother the older Doctor instead. "What are you doing?"

"Working on the programming on the telepathic signal," he replied vaguely. "I want all of these people to walk away thinking they had an afternoon's frolic in a role playing game, not a kidnapping. What was with the smuggler's holes, do you know?"

Ace frowned. "Yeah, the Prince took the whole convention, not just the people he wanted to hypnotize to run the ship. The telepathic field thingees were on the name tags as well as in the blue whatsits. Anyone who just got taken ended up in the smugglers holes. He was going to use them for cannon fodder."

The Doctor looked up at her with angry eyes and she nodded. He sighed. "Sometimes I wonder why I bother to feel guilty," he announced, grimly.

Ace couldn't have argued with that if she tried. "Where are we going?"

"You're going to hand the Streerax over to the Shadow Proclamation," he told her. "I'm going to let you and Rose handle it because they won't even believe I exist."

"You said something about a War?" she asked.

"I can't talk about it," he said, "and it will be better for you to forget it for now."

"You're going to erase my memory?" she wondered.

"To protect the time lines."

The way he said it, she understood him to mean that if the time lines weren't in danger, he would never do such a thing. She was grateful, but maybe not as grateful as she should be. "Can I get them back? After it's over, or something? I wouldn't like to forget you, or Buttercup." She sighed, then. "I guess it doesn't matter."

The Doctor frowned and considered. "I don't suppose it will do any harm," he said. "I can put a trigger on it or something like I'm apparently going to do to myself." He tapped a few keys on the computer, then looked up again and met her eyes. "Let me think about it. There's a few more things we have to do first. Just... please don't mention the War to your Doctor. He's got enough on his plate."

"So've you," Ace said grimly. She looked across the room and saw that the blonde woman who seemed to be the center of his universe was talking animatedly with a couple of the Bridge crew. "What're you gonna do about Buttercup?"

"Are you asking what I ought to do or what I'm more likely to do?" he said, shaking his head as the self-deprecating expression fell over his face again. It was odd. He was so different from the Doctor who was trying so hard to drag her up properly. And yet, the similarity was there, uncanny if you didn't know they were the same man. There was nothing alike about them, and yet, they had some sort of aura, something of the same haunting in their eyes.

"I'm going to miss you, Professor," Ace said.

The Doctor smiled. "I'll miss you, Ace, but I'm not so sure about you missing me. I think I'll try to put a memory trigger on this, for you. I'd like you to know, someday, that you really do mean the world to me."

* * *


	19. Chapter 18: Never and Always

  
Turning the Streerax over to the Shadow Proclamation turned out to be just about the easiest thing she'd ever done at the Professor's request, at least as far as Ace could see. Once Buttercup managed to convince them that the battle ship hanging in space next to their floating chunk of rock wasn't going to attack them, things went reasonably well.  
  
They treated Ace with enormous respect, and she found herself wondering what it was she might do in the future that had so impressed them. Everywhere she went on their station, they followed her with their glittering red eyes full of curiosity and some sort of awe. She knew better than to ask, since it'd probably make her only very unhappy if she was lucky.  
  
With Buttercup, they just seemed determined to make sure that their eyes and hers never met. It looked like guilt to Ace, but it could also be pity or, she supposed, Buttercup could freak them out for some reason, even if it didn't make sense to Ace.  
  
It turned out the Shadow people had been looking for this particular lot of Streerax anyway, and they were only too happy to have them. They also offered to take the ship and "cargo" off their hands. Ace was offended by that, and Buttercup tried to be soothing and give them the benefit of the doubt. Eventually, however, they'd had to put their feet down, with Buttercup making the assertion that the people on the ship were her responsibility and no one else's. Eventually, the Shadow people gave up and let it go.  
  
Neither one of them mentioned either Doctor. It seemed safer that way.  
  


*?*

Thanks to the miracle of Gallifreyan genius as applied to the available tech, the Doctors had managed to bring the ship through a little-known portal that would effectively have them back to Earth about fifteen minutes after they'd originally left it. It seemed easiest, really. Let the tourists think they'd had a quick game with a fun pretend package tour of the solar system and then drop them back at the end of the twentieth century with an incredible special effect to talk about.

Now, the Doctors and their companions were all standing on the glassed-in observation deck, watching the ship cross the length of the solar system as it approached Earth on a carefully described vector. A contented quiet had settled over them all, but the Doctor rather thought that, under the circumstances, it was pretty much the calm before the storm.

His younger self looked at him sternly as Jupiter grew in their view from pin prick to proto-star. "Talk to her," he ordered, and reached over to take Ace's hand.

The girl grinned and bounced after her Doctor, leaving the space of two bodies between the Doctor and Rose. There was the sound of the door opening and shushing shut behind them, and they were alone.

He had no idea where to start. Well, he did, but... "I'm sorry," he said.

Rose blinked up at him. "For what?"

"That you had to see me like that, that I acted like that, that you had to see what I did to Mevlin, that he has to forget you... Blimey, it's a list."

Rose gave him her cheeky smile and leaned into his side. "I'm sorry he has to forget me, too. The rest of it... I understand the rest of it, I suppose."

"I... d'you want to go with him?" the Doctor asked.

Rose blinked. "I can't, can I?"

He shrugged. "Well, it'll mess up established events now, but... there's a point, later... I tried to retire for awhile. You could stay with me then, live your whole life with me."

He felt a wave of annoyance, not anger or fear, just annoyance, hit him. "That what you want, Doctor? Me to live my whole life with some more domestic version of you, but not really quite you, because you'll never remember it or the life we shared or, more to the point, the end of my life? Is that it? Not to mention me knowing things I can never say to him because he'd never understand?"

"Rose, I..."

"What about the fact that you'll be alone, then? When I swore I'd never leave you. I meant that, you know." She sighed, a look of complete exasperation on her face. "Look, it's like this. My mum, what if she could meet that other Pete, the one we saw in that other world? Would she be in love with him, too, automatically?"

"Possibly," the Doctor said, trusting that he was finding a way around to his point by saying that.

Rose grinned triumphantly and he suspected he'd just managed to help her trump his argument somehow. "Exactly. Because you're very likely to love people you already loved, even if they're younger or older or slightly different from what they ought to be. But it's a different love, a different emotion. So yes, I love him. I really, truly do, Doctor, and I could spend my whole life with him an' if that's what you want me to do, I'll do it. But not because it's what makes me happy. Because it's what you want for me. So you need to tell me what you want, and tell me the truth."

The Doctor sighed. "I want you safe, and happy, and with me," he said.

Rose shook her head. "I'm sorry, Doctor. You can only have two out of three, not all of them."

"What?" he asked, completely flummoxed. "But... oh, wait, I see." His shoulders slumped. "You can be happy and with me, but not safe."

"Right," she agreed. "Or, you can keep me in the TARDIS all the time an' I'll be with you an' safe, but I won't be happy. Or you can drop me back on Earth, erase my memory of ever meeting you, and I'll be happy and safe until I get run over crossing the street like my dad."

"But why?" he complained.

"Don't ask me," she said, a bite and a sharpness to her words that wasn't unknown but was uncommon. "Look, you're always on about how human beings are so alive because we have such short lives, we have to cram so much living into a little space of time. From where I'm sitting, you're the most human being of all. An' don't look at me like that, it wasn't an insult." She shook her head, and her voice gentled, but only a very little. "You cram so much being into tiny spaces. I'd known you twenty-four hours before I'd've risked my life to save you, and known you forty-eight before I was fine to die before I was ever born just so long as you were beside me. And you didn't think I was being 'too human' doing that, because you hadn't known me a week before you considered watching your pet planet go up in flames rather than risk my life."

He sighed. It came back to that, and that meant, really, that it was probably time to tell her. "That's when it happened," he confessed, at last. "I didn't ever want to tell you, because... well, because I... it was a liberty. I mean, I couldn't have done it without your consent, but maybe you weren't aware of the consent, I dunno, and I thought... especially when you didn't even like the TARDIS in your head at first, never mind me, I... Do you know you are one of very very few companions I have EVER had who didn't automatically assume that everyone in the Universe spoke their language? And if I hadn't known you were clever before that, I..."

"Doctor. Stop." She put both hands on his face, forcing him to meet her eyes. "You're using the babbling defense again. Just tell me what you did and we'll fix it, ok?"

He nodded, swallowed hard, took a step back when she released him. "I touched you, just to check on you. I automatically used telepathy, I couldn't help it. I'm a telepath from a telepathic species, it's practically instinct for me to use telepathy, like it is for you to shout someone's name. And I couldn't not do it because I... I was terrified, all right? You let me in. Just flung open the doors to your head and spray painted across the wall of your mental flat was 'Disturbed and broken Time Lord welcome here.' And I pulled up a metaphysical chair at the numinous table and just made myself at home."

She blinked at him. "You've been in my head that long and you never thought to tell me?"

"Door swings both ways in cases like this. We've been in each other's heads that long."

"Ah." She frowned, chewed thoughtfully at her lip. "I'm really, really pissed off at you right now." She said it casually, as if it was an observation.

He hung his head. "I can't undo it any more. I mean... well, I could, but it would hurt you, I think..."

"Did I say you had to undo it?" she demanded crossly. "I just said I'm pissed off. That's why they think I'm your partner? Because of a mental link, and they can see it?"

He sighed. "Anyone who sees in four or five dimensions - like Daleks or Mdrestry or other Time Lords if there were any or Eternals or really too large a number of species to name, and Jack, too, he picked it up on his Vortex Manipulator, eventually - anyone who sees like that thinks you're... well, in Earth terms... well, my wife."

"Your... wife." She looked like she'd been whacked across the head with a cricket bat. Her expression then settled on one that suggested the cricket bat was headed for his skull instead. She paced up and down the room, gesticulating wildly, swearing in every language she knew swear words in (which was a surprisingly large number; he and Jack should probably have watched their mouths, really), and making very, very threatening statements about potential future locations of bits of his anatomy whose existence she could - to quote her - "neither confirm nor deny".

"It's not exactly literally married," he interrupted frantically. "I mean... gah." He tugged at his hair, kicked the wall, then turned back to her, his words racing one another to get out. "It's old, from my planet. Generally, Time Lords were bound to other Time Lords. That's the way it worked by the time I came along. But when the society was younger, Time Lords fell in love just as freely as anyone else, and sometimes they fell in love with Gallifreyans who weren't Time Lords and, if the legends are true, sometimes even with off-worlders. The link, the bond if you will, protected the non-Time Lord partner."

He sighed and paced back and forth in front of her. "I wanted to protect you more than I wanted to breathe. And twice, I've thought you were dead, and the bond insisted otherwise, and I clung to it, reinforced it. And then... well, what happened on Satellite Five... made it permanent. But I haven't made it complete. There've been times when it was all I could do to keep it as it is."

Her eyes widened incredulously. "There's more?"

"It's not a full marriage link, not yet. What Mevlin did destabilized the connection, made me unable to reach you or you to reach me." Frowning, he scratched at the back of his neck. "You do that a lot, especially when you're asleep. Or lonely. Or... or certain other times, and..."

"You're blushing," Rose said. "What are you hiding?"

"Nothing," he promised, insisted, really. "I'm telling you the truth. You reach for me almost as often as I reach for you. You've become dependent on the bond, too, and... remember the black hole, when I fell?"

She winced. "Yes," she whispered. "I... remember... seeing you..."

"I knew you were on that space ship because of the bond. If you'd been on the planet... I don't know what I would have done. If this incident is any indicator, though, old big ears or the lunatic in the technicolor coat or some me would've been around to pick you up." He blinked, eyes widening. "If that ever happens, any of them but big ears know nothing about the War, all right?"

"Will you quit calling yourself that?" she demanded. "I loved you, ears, accent, and all."

He pouted. "What?" she asked.

He added the great big bunny eyes to the pout, forcing himself not to smile when he saw her lips start to quiver and twitch toward a smile she couldn't help. "You used the past tense," he complained.

Rose rolled her eyes. "Daft git," she said fondly. "C'mere."

He walked hesitantly into her range, not sure if it was really safe or not to get close enough to get hit. Still, he couldn't resist her, not like this. Not at all, not really, not any more. She held out her arms and he wrapped her up in a hug, planting a kiss on her hair.

"I love you, Doctor," she whispered. "Whatever face you're wearing."

The words were there, on the tip of his tongue. He could say them, now, it was so much easier, he'd already said them. All he had to do was open his great big gob and let the right words finally come.

"Captain to the Bridge," said a voice over the intercom system.

The Doctor glowered at the voice but Rose actually laughed. "C'mon," she said. "Let's get these people home."

He glowered all the way to the Bridge in the lift, trying to get the stupid words to stupid say themselves. He had a right to say them now, blast it all. "I..."

The lift doors whoosed open and Rose put her hand on his lips. "It's all right," she said. "I know."

*?*

Rose gave orders to the crew, feeling a bit melancholy as she did. The idea of being a ship captain was fun, but in reality it was lonely and frightening without the Doctor there at her side. She would never forget how it felt to be without him and, despite the fact that she still thought she owed him a slap, she wouldn't give up the bond for anything in this world or any other.

And what it meant? That was too fantastic to be denied. He was hers and she was his. He would always find a way back to her, would never be able to leave her. The bond meant that he never wanted to do. Part of her was willing to worry that he didn't like having it, that it was something he'd done on impulse and regretted, but that part of her had lost all coherence as she recognized the warm, comforting feelings in her head.

She'd always had that, since Downing Street apparently, the moments when she would feel sad or frightened or alone, and then she would feel as if the Doctor was with her, holding her hand, comforting her. That was the bond, in action, him reaching out to hold her with his mind even when he couldn't touch her with his hands. She knew what it was now, when before she'd just thought it was her imagination giving her false confidence. It was him, needing her and believing in her.

She knew that maybe they would have to work out some other things - like what other times she reached for him - but they were together, forever. Her Doctor and his Rose, and she was completely euphoric on that knowledge as the ship settled into a lazy circle around the Earth.

They triggered the mass teleport, stopping in the Convention center only long enough to check that the fix the Doctor had programmed into the telepathic field was working. Once they'd assured themselves that the crowds were chattering happily about RPGs and special effects, they took themselves off to the current TARDIS, disappearing quickly before the team from UNIT could descend on them.

*?*

"What happened in here?" Seven demanded. "Coral? Honestly."

"Have you seen the leopard skin?" the Doctor replied. "It's ghastly. This is a much better option."

"I like it," Rose said, and the TARDIS, of course, preened under the warmth of her words.

The Doctor grinned and bounded to the controls. "One last thing to take care of," he said, "and Ace, I think that's your department."

Ace beamed at him. "Wicked," she announced.

*?*

"Dunno why the Professor's letting me get away with this," Ace said cheerfully as she worked around the central engine column.

Seven and his TARDIS were currently towing the ship out of Earth's solar system. Rose and Ace and the other Doctor were rigging up something to dispose of it. Then, the four planned to rendevous on Earth.

"Why d'you say that?" Rose wondered.

"He's not usually very partial to me blowing things up, you know. Tells me not to make explosives and won't let me carry them with me if he thinks to stop me."

Rose stopped what she was doing - running a line of wires joining a series of explosives to a detonator the Doctor had set in the TARDIS doorway - and just gaped at Ace. "You're kidding right?"

"No, I'm completely serious. Buttercup, what's with you?"

Rose burst out laughing. "You great alien hypocrite!" she shouted happily.

"Did someone call for a Time Lord?" the Doctor asked, from the other side of the column, a vivid twinkle in his bright, dark eyes.

"Yes!" Rose laughed, then turned to a completely flabbergasted Ace. "Ace, that's how we met, the Doctor and me. He blew up my job."

"No way!" Ace exclaimed, looking from one to another in thunderstruck awe.

The Doctor laughed. "She was a wide-eyed innocent shop girl, I was a cynical old alien with big ears and a megaton equivalent explosive." The Doctor shook his head. "She completely blew me away."

Rose rolled her eyes but decided to let the nearly stolen lines pass without mention.

"That's some serious damage, Professor. What'd you use?" Ace wanted to know.

"Unbound-XR-triple-nitro solid state with thalox for a delaying agent," the Doctor replied, expert to expert.

"Wicked," Ace decided. She had a grin that looked like it wouldn't come off her face for days. Suddenly, she sniffed theatrically and wiped away an imaginary tear. "They grow up so fast!"

*?*

The Doctor took the TARDIS out about 20 light minutes off the pseudo-starship's port bow. Then, for the first time in a long time, he opened the dome and they all watched as the singularity's containment field detonated. "That's our bit done," said the Doctor as the initial explosions rocked the secondary hull. "Now, what happens next is there's nothing feeding that little black hole, and nothing keeping it stable, so it'll pull itself inside out..."

The two girls watched as this might or might not be happening unseen.

"And then," the Doctor said, "massive energy discharge as it implodes itself to quantum state."

The ship rocked, tilted on its vertical axis, and then blew itself to star dust.

Ace and Rose cheered and bounced around the console room, hugging each other and laughing. The Doctor watched them with an indulgent grin "And now, Miss Tyler, Miss McShane, I think that's enough exploding space ships for you. Time to head back to Earth so you can get into your respective beds in your correct TARDIS and get some rest at long last."

*?*

"Just trust me, all right?" the Professor said - Rose's Doctor, not her own, but Ace understood now that they were really the same person.

"You will make sure I can remember this later?" Ace asked hesitantly as he reached for her temples.

"I will," the Doctor said. "Because it means a lot to me, too, Ace. But not as much as you do. It's very important to me that you remember that, even if you don't want to remember anything else about this, after all. I've always been proud of you, I've missed you, and I love you."

He leaned forward and put his hands to the sides of her face. His cool lips brushed her forehead with parental affection and Ace couldn't help herself grinning. "Take care of Buttercup," she ordered. "She's good for you."

"I know," he said gently. "And now, my Ace, close your eyes..."

The last thing that she heard was the older Doctor's younger voice whisper, "I'm so, so sorry."

*?*

Rose waited with the younger Doctor, knowing that he had to wait two lifetimes to see her again. "But it's okay, I guess, because you won't miss me," she said.

"I don't know," the Doctor replied. "It's possible I've always missed you and just never knew it."

Rose shook her head, laughing ruefully. "He really needs lessons from you, do you think you could hang around a bit?"

The Doctor smiled his quirky, mysterious smile. They were practically the same height, she and this Doctor, so she could look him in the eyes easily. The blue was vivid and sparkling with warmth and humor. "Oh, Rose. I'm still the Doctor. At the moment, I can get away with anything because the potential consequences to me are limited. Let my natural proclivities have a chance to reassert themselves and I can mess this up just as well as other me can."

Rose smiled with love and fondness. "Wouldn't have you any other way," she said sincerely.

The older Doctor returned with a very dreamy looking Ace in tow. "Now remember," he began.

"I know," the younger Doctor replied dryly. "Timeline-base recall. Not difficult to arrange, not really." He turned to Rose. "I'd say I'll look forward to meeting you, and I will, but only for the next few minutes. Still, it was delightful to meet you." He smiled beautifully. "Precious girl."

He kissed her then, kissed her until she saw little dancing stars, until she wasn't sure what was going on except that she was kissing him back quite enthusiastically, until the other Doctor's loud protest finally got through to both of them. "Oi! How are we s'posed to fix the time-lines with you two making out in the doorway like a couple of randy adolescents? Please leave her clothes on, thank you."

"Rude," Rose chided. Then she looked back to the blue-eyed Doctor. "I'd say I'll miss you, but you'll be right here with me."

He nodded. "Until we meet again," he said, and guided Ace outside, back to yesterday.

"Rude," the Doctor complained. "I'm rude. I'm not the me snogging the hell out of someone right in front of me."

"Well, you could," Rose observed dryly as she closed the doors. "No one's stopping you."

The Doctor grinned. "Off we go?" he suggested.

Rose laughed. "Into time and space!" she agreed cheerfully and bounded over to the console.

The Doctor reached and took Rose's hand and it was just right, just perfect. Rose looked up at him and grinned like sunrise, open invitation in her thoughts and in the way that teasing tip of her tongue poked out, just visible enough to be taunting. Ever since he had met her, that little temptation had been there, a smile she wore only for him, the constant bane of his determination to keep their love affair on a quiet pedestal, chaste and pure, to be admired from afar but never indulged.

But that was before he knew what losing her would feel like. That was before he knew what the silence in his head without her would sound like. That was before he knew what her kiss really tasted like.

He smiled at her, and cupped her cheek in his hand, looking deep into the golden brown eyes that looked back at him with so much love. "My precious girl," the Doctor murmured. Then he took Rose Tyler and everything she was, everything she made him become, into his arms where, as always, she truly belonged.

* * *


	20. Epilogue: Touching and Touched

  
"I sorta wondered what else this bond does," Rose mused. In between bouts of kissing, cuddling, whispering, she and the Doctor had wandered down the corridor to her room. They'd gotten no further than curling up together on the bed, chaste and fully clothed and occasionally kissing each other breathless.  
  
That seemed to be the extent of it, and on the surface, it was. Beneath the surface, where things weren't seen, the bond that existed between them, that had existed for two years now, was slowly mending. The forced separation had hurt them both, and the pain and fear of it still felt raw. Rose could still feel a slight tension headache, and the Doctor couldn't seem to stop touching her.  
  
"Well, you saw most of what it does," he said. Ruefully, he shook his head, his hand curling lightly through her hair. "I'm sorry you had to find out like this, Rose, but I'm not sorry you found out. I know I should be, and I know you're allowed to be furious with me or not speak to me or to set Jackie on me or whatever you want, really, but please don't do it tonight. It's not that I can't seem to stop touching you, it's that I can't stop touching you - I did try, you know, but it's like..."  
  
She stopped him with a hand over his lips, smiling a playful, silly smile. "I'd miss the babbling," she said, softly. "Like I miss the blue eyes or that Northern accent. I'd miss the babbling." She shook her head against her pillow. "But you can stop now," she added, and kissed him.  
  
Sweet and tender and maybe just a little longer than necessary for an innocent kiss, they clung together until the need ebbed again. When they broke apart, the Doctor's tie was open and several of his buttons. Rose's zipper might have slipped a little further, also, but she wasn't sure. The point was, she could feel it clearly in her head now, the way his emotions and thought patterns sort of formed an alien love song at the very bottom of her consciousness. It was so strange, and yet so familiar at once, because it had been there so long and because she had welcomed it long before she ever knew what it was.  
  
"I wondered... you said something about 'certain other times', when I reach for you, and I just wondered what they might be. I understand in times of stress or fear or when I'm feeling particularly in love with you for some reason, but..."  
  
The Doctor chuckled lightly and dropped a quick kiss on her lower lip, which cut her off mid-explanation. "It may be that I'm contagious," he observed, then something in his eyes seemed to catch dark, strange fire. His hands went to the buttons on his shirt, undoing them one at a time.  
  
Rose watched this, unable to stem the stuttering mess of thought and emotion in her head. It wasn't that she'd never seen the Doctor take off his shirt before, it was just that he'd not been in her bed while doing it before. Long standing habit had complete amusement and a flippant comment winning out over any reaction a different woman - one who hadn't been hiding love for her best friend forever - might have had. "Something wrong with that shirt?" she asked.  
  
"S'in the way," the Doctor said, watching her, refusing to look away as he finished the final button and shoved the dress shirt out of the way.  
  
Rose bit her lip, tried to keep her breathing calm and her hatred of his t-shirt to a minimum. To amuse herself, she toyed with the zip on the uniform jumpsuit she was still wearing, and the Doctor's eyes seemed to lock onto her fingers the instant they touched the zip tab.  
  
He licked his lips, then started to lecture, softly. "There's really a lot of similarity between our two species. Our basic biological structures are practically identical on the genetic level. My species has got a third strand of DNA and several variants that we built into our genetic coding. However, an early Gallifreyan and an early human would have been largely indistinguishable - even with a bath - except for a few anomalies in the Gallifreyan cerebral cortex and a tendency to interpret time in a way that most species would consider odd."  
  
Rose could tell, from learning what the link felt like in her head, that he was up to something, but it amused her to chuff in exasperation at him, all the same. Just because their relationship was on the verge of changing, it didn't mean that the essential parts that made them who they were had to change, too. "Thank you for the lecture, could you help me with the point?"  
  
He pulled his t-shirt off over his head, and Rose didn't care what the point was anymore. In fact, if he hadn't sat up to put himself safely out of the reach of her lips, she would have decided the point was the pebbled peak of the closest of his taut, tempting nipples, and that the point belonged on her lips. "The point is that many of our biochemicals are the same, which is a good thing, under the circumstances."  
  
Deep breath, Rose Tyler, she thought to herself. Concentrate, girl. "Why?"  
  
"Because I want to make love to you and the only way that'll work properly is this little biochemical that females of my species produce at climax, which female humans also, thankfully, produce." He shrugged, a playful sparkle in his eyes. The soft mental buzz was bubbling like freshly uncorked champagne, all shiny and fizzy at once. "It's been very handy with my frustrations, I can tell you that, but I'm afraid the fantasizing just isn't working any more for either of us."  
  
She should have guessed she had no privacy from him. In fact, Rose thought, she had guessed that, even fantasized that he knew more than once. But hearing it suggested... she needed clarification. "You're saying you know when I... um...?"  
  
The Doctor's cheeks were pink and his eyes were closed when he bent to kiss her this time. Rose let him for a moment, but found she couldn't get lost in the sensation until she heard him out. She pushed him away and stared sternly into his eyes.  
  
"All right, yes," he agreed, running his fingers through his hair and tugging at it urgently. "But it's really okay, Rose, because I can usually fantasize with you." He gave a small laugh that sounded and felt self-deprecating, like he was laughing at himself, but unamused. "We have an alarmingly detailed sex life inside my head, honestly."  
  
"Great." Part of her didn't care how sarcastic that had sounded, or even about anything beyond the fact that he'd said he wanted to make love to her. That part of her wished he'd stop talking, wished she'd stop talking too, so they could go back to the kissing and his bare chest and her fingers which were somehow getting tangled in his fine, dark chest hair.  
  
"No, really, it's ok," he said, as if he was trying to convince both of them. His eyes were on her hands on his chest more than meeting her eyes. He did look up, however, brown to brown, with deepening need in his eyes, his voice, his mind's touch, when he said, "I need that little chemical."  
  
Rose found herself wondering how the front of her uniform had been opened completely. It took her a moment to register what he said and look up from where his broad hands were spanning most of the way around her waist. "Because it makes you horny?"  
  
He chuckled darkly, leaned over her, and started nipping at her neck. Rose had completely forgotten about biochemicals or anything about the conversation at all when he murmured, darkly, in her ear, "Because I can't achieve orgasm without it!"  
  
Rose's whole body flushed and everything froze. Time stopped, space stopped, the lilting lullaby of his thoughts stopped. She pushed the Doctor away with two small hands shoving his shoulders, so completely thunderstruck that she had to see this confirmation in his eyes. "But... Wait. You're saying you can't get off unless I do?"  
  
He nodded hesitantly. "Is that a problem?" he wondered after a moment of her gaping at him.  
  
Rose tackled him to the bed and climbed on top of him, straddling his hips, her hands resting firmly on his shoulders so she could look him in the eyes. "I'm keeping you," she proclaimed fervently. "You're mine, I'm never letting you go, no one else can ever ever have you." She lay down on top of him, cuddling him as closely and possessively as humanly possible. "Mine."  
  
He laughed gleefully and wrapped his arms around her, hands tangling in her hair. "All right, if you say so. But why all this?"  
  
"Just trust me. If human women found out about that one, you wouldn't have to worry about being studied for all your knowledge or your technical skills or your two hearts. They'd study you to find a way to put human men under the same restriction and, failing that, they'd worship you as a sex god."  
  
"Are you gonna worship me as a sex god?" the Doctor asked, his voice gone all dark and strange and intense.  
  
"Do you want me to?" Rose hardly recognized her own voice, either, the soft, husky, inviting sound that it made almost completely new to her.  
  
"Might be nice," the Doctor murmured against her collar bone.  
  
Rose pushed away from him and stared down into his eyes, hers dark and flashing and completely in love. It was an order, not a request, when she breathed, "Then convince me."  
  
The bond flared to life first, the welcoming, all encompassing feeling of being within each other all there was in the universe for several brief or endless moments. When it backed off, there were two people on that bed, not the powerful Time Lord and his human companion, but her Doctor and his Rose, and they were so ready to belong to each other.  
  
What was left of their clothes seemed to melt away as they traded kisses that burned and steamed, that left their thundering hearts as bare as their bodies. The Doctor's inability to stop touching Rose seemed to have extended itself into a need to be touching her every single place that was made bare to him. Rose's need to be as close to him as possible wouldn't be stayed or held back.  
  
Wrapped in nothing more than each other's arms and the night, they moved together as if they had no other purpose in existence. Rose had never felt so in tune with a lover, knowing and trusting and even breathing with her Doctor every moment. They fell into a rhythm that was all them long before they took that final step, hips rocking together, hands entwined and learning pleasure, heat, and skin.  
  
When he entered her body, the moment seemed to freeze, time stopping its crazy dance to give them one moment of perfect, united clarity. Their eyes met, both dark pairs wide and wild at the enormity of what they had just done. It had seemed such a simple thing, before this, for him to keep her on the pedestal he'd made for her, for her to step back and wish he'd some day come to her.  
  
Now, as he moved within her, as she moved against him, it felt like they had been waiting for this moment far longer than either of them could understand, not even with all the time they understood between them. It felt as inevitable as tide and as natural as rain, all the same.  
  
Heat and slickness and building, driving, questing, seeking... Soft whispers, moans, encouragement, pleas... Everything, everything drove and drove, upward, ever upward, reaching for that spiral that is the crescendo of a dance as old as the stars. Cries and whimpers and gasps and ragged breaths as they shattered and shuddered together, the height exquisite and ecstatic.  
  
Words of love and promises, tears and startled laughter... They clung together in the heat and exertion sweat of their bodies, neither surprised it had been so devastating and brilliant, but neither able to voice all they felt.  
  
"There just aren't words," the Doctor breathed, brushing a reverent fingertip over the mark his kiss had left on Rose's shoulder.  
  
"Even in your language?" she wondered.  
  
"Not even in Gallifreyan," he said, honestly.  
  
"I love you," Rose whispered.  
  
"Then again," the Doctor said, a delighted laugh trying to escape his lips, "those three just about cover it."  
  
They lay there together for a long time, hand in hand, basking in the body memory that skittered like falling flower petals over their skin. Finally, the Doctor broke the silence between them, by whispering those three words of absolute truth into their private unity.  
  
Rose smiled and nodded and, because only he could hear her, she whispered his name.  
  


*?*

"I used to wonder if we'd ever get here," the Doctor mused thoughtfully. He was wrapped around Rose again as they relaxed in a large sunken tub.

"Here particularly," Rose asked, giving him his favorite grin, "or just here in general?"

"Well, both really," the Doctor said with a laugh, and blew soap suds into her hair. "Part of me always knew we could, but..."

Rose reached under the water to cup the part of him she suspected always knew. He yelped and then started laughing. "That is not what I meant," he insisted. He almost managed to look innocent, but gave himself away by tugging at his ear at the last moment. Rose had long since decided that she wasn't going to let him play poker with strangers.

"Your earlier self seemed almost determined to get us here," Rose pointed out.

"I shudder to think what he would have tried if he hadn't known I would break," the Doctor agreed.

Rose giggled and blushed brightly. "I'm not sure I want to know," she said.

"You have a one track mind, Rose Tyler," the Doctor accused. "No, I think it probably would have been some sort of sleight of hand. I was very clever with magic tricks in that incarnation."

"I dunno," Rose said. "Wouldn't it have made more sense to go with something unique to this you - like that oral fixation?"

The Doctor pouted. "It isn't a fixation," he insisted.

Rose was glad he wasn't wearing his trousers, as she suspected they would have burst into flame at that singularly incredible pronouncement. "Right," she said, and she almost managed to sound like she believed him. Almost. Then she sighed. "Could have combined the two, I suppose."

"What, like slipped jelly babies down your top or something?" the Doctor suggested.

Rose rolled her eyes. Trying not to laugh, she said, "Now I know what to get you for your birthday."

* * *


End file.
